Caravaggio`s Deaths

Transcript

Caravaggio`s Deaths

Caravaggio's Deaths
Author(s): Philip Sohm
Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 449-468
Published by: College Art Association
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Caravaggio'sDeaths
Philip Sohm
Derek Jarman opens his claustrophobic, skyless Caravaggio
(1986) with the feverish artist on his shadowy deathbed (Fig.
1). The film pieces together Michelangelo da Caravaggio's
life retrospectively, from the vantage point of the dying artist.
Death gives structure and meaning to Caravaggio's life. Mortality, for Jarman, explained the essence of his art. When
asked why he made the film, Jarman responded obliquely by
paraphrasing two early biographies of the artist, by Giovanni
Baglione (1642) and Giovan Pietro Bellori (1672):
The beach at Porto Ercole stretches lazily into the heat
haze; a crescent dune walling up stagnant and dank undergrowth, dense, infested with midges that brush you like
nettles. It was on this beach that Michele ran, in a fury, to
retrieve the souvenirs of his life, disappearing over the
horizon in a fishing boat in lieu of his failure to pay his
passage. He collapsed in the sun and was carried by fishermen to the Spanish garrison high up on the cliff face, to
die the next day.'
The beach as a scene of desperation and death, the loss of
"souvenirs," and the subsequent collapse in the sun were key
elements in the seicento biographies thatJarman had read in
Howard Hibbard's sexualized Caravaggio (1983). Although
he never used the beach scene in the film (too bright, too
furious, too Hollywood), a voice-over by "Caravaggio" at the
beginning of the film tells us how he arrived at his deathbed:
Malta, Syracuse, Messina, Naples-four years on the run,
so many labels on the luggage and hardly a friendly face,
always on the move, running into the poisonous blue sea,
running under the July sun,July 18 of 1610, adrift.... The
boats are on the beach, the nets hung out to dry, the dog
star creeps out to bark the raging sun into the west, Sole da
Leone, the Lion sun, hunted into the dark.
Throughout most of Caravaggio, Jarman flouted historical
objectivity by introducing motorbikes and typewriters, but a
strict historicity marks the deathbed scene. The story that
Baglione and Bellori narrated remains intact: Caravaggio
runs on the beach, desperate to retrieve his luggage, while
the hot summer sun-the Sole da Leone-beams
down. The
wounded, dirty, dark painter struggling under a bleaching
summer sun survives in other modern fictional accounts, as,
for example, when Enzo Siciliano evokes the sun to create an
alien environment for the dying Caravaggio:
The fortress [at Port'Ercole] bathed in the last burning
rays of the sun. The heat of thatJuly day was dying on the
surface of the clear water.... There was too much light, so
clear that it hurt your eyes... and made him wish with
passionate, urgent longing for the torch hanging from the
roof... for the closed room, the nocturnal atmosphere.... 2
Caravaggio's seicento biographers might have appreciated
the narrative poignancy of the scene in similar ways, just as
they probably believed in its historical veracity, but the persistence of the story can be explained in other ways. My thesis
is that Caravaggio's biographers adjusted their stories of his
death in order to characterize his life and personal style. His
death reveals for them the essence of his art. Art imitates life,
certainly, but so, too, does life imitate art, especially in biography, where fictional verisimilitude is used to attain the
higher goal of truth. An artist's biography can be documented and factual, and indeed some seicento art biographers pushed archival research much deeper into their writing than had previously been the norm. But biography is also
an artful construction of embellished or even invented "facts"
that explains why paintings look the way they do. In various
stories of Caravaggio's death, biography can be read as art
criticism.
Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz introduced to art history the
notion that early modern biographies elide the boundaries
between fact and fiction in order to conceptualize the category of artist and to mythologize individual artists.3 However,
just because a "narrative cell," to use Kris and Kurz's term for
the elemental building blocks of anecdote, borrows from a
fictional tradition does not necessarily mean that it, too, is
fictional. Paul Barolsky embraced their lesson, perhaps too
heartily, in his conviction that Giorgio Vasari's Le vite de' pii
eccellentipittori, scultori e architettoriis "a masterpiece of Renaissance fiction," and extended the typological reading of Vasari's biographies as a higher form of truth: "Vasari's tales are
never mere fiction, because such fictions tell us a great deal
about how Vasari imagined 'reality,' which is part of the
historical record. Knowing how to read Vasari, we come to
see just how much history is poetically embedded in his tall
tales."4 Kris and Kurz and Barolsky read biography primarily
as mythmaking where the literal truth is supplanted by a
higher, poetic truth about art and the artist as hero or, in
Caravaggio's case, antihero.
The stories of Caravaggio's death offer two corrective corollaries to their accounts: first, that historical truth can coexist with mythologized biography, and second, that biography
can shape interpretations of paintings and, inversely, that
paintings can shape biography.5 I am interested in the borderlands where fiction bleeds into fact in the afterlives of his
death, where the literary forms start to shape the biographical content. Scholars who aspire to document the singularity
of historical events often turn to biographies as reasonable
substitutes for more unbiased evidence. To say that they
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1 Still from Caravaggio,written and directed by DerekJarman,
British Film Institute in association with Channel Four
Television,
U.K., 1986 (photo: British Film Institute)
extrapolate plausible narratives from incomplete data and
hence are complicit in accepting an early mythologizing
mode of artist biography sounds like a condemnation of
current practice. Actually, my intention is only to suggest that
the migration of fact into fiction is a necessary and even
desirable precondition of writing history, that all biography
constructs a text from other texts. Biographers produce complex and allusive texts by importing such storytelling techniques as irony and narrative closure. Art history, as a relatively new literary genre in the seicento, needed to borrow
from other dominant forms like hagiography, biography,
poetry, and novelle.Because language is not a neutral medium
but a densely allusive and subliminal one, writers can tell
their readers many things at once. Historical narratives, as
Hayden White argues, are effective not so much as a literary
structure to convey information as a means to
test the capacity of a culture's fictions to endow real events
with the kinds of meaning that literature displays to consciousness through its fashioning of patterns of "imaginary" events. Precisely insofar as the historical narrative
endows sets of real events with the kinds of meaning found
otherwise only in myth and literature, we are justified in
regarding it as a product of allegoresis.Therefore, rather
than regard every historical narrative as mythic or ideological in nature, we should regard it as allegorical, that is,
as saying one thing and meaning another. Thus envisaged,
the narrative figurates the body of events that serves as its
primary referent and transforms these events into intimations of patterns of meaning that any literal representation
of them as facts could never produce.6
Of White's four tropes of historiography (metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, and irony), the lives of Caravaggio, or
more exactly the "deaths" of Caravaggio, lend themselves to
analysis primarily by means of irony and metaphor.
3
Biography as Art Criticism
Because Caravaggio was a murderer, and because he often
stabbed, battered, and molested, and because he populated
his painted world with a high incidence, per capita, of beheadings and decapitated heads, biographers have seen violence and death as the central conceit of his life and art.
Beginnings and endings, the dual portals of narrative, are
often charged with portent and revelation. Most artists died
inconspicuously of old age or unspecified causes. Some
devoutly prepared themselves for death (Michelangelo and
Bernini) or died in pious acts (Bandinelli); others worked
themselves to death. There are also status deaths, such as
Leonardo expiring in the arms of Francis I. However, a few
artists died artistically in ways that bind the mode of dying to
the style of painting, where death imitates life.7 Spinello
Aretino, ever timorous (like his figures) after being mugged,
painted a bestial Satan so terrifyingly real that it escaped from
the painting and appeared to Spinello in his sleep, a nightmare Pygmalion scenario.8 He awakened "half mad with staring eyes" and a few days later "he slipped into the grave,"
having frightened himself to death, killed by his own artistic
success. Other artists died in the embrace of women or in hot
pursuit-Giorgione,
Raphael, and Domenico Puligo-and
these
were
artists whose styles were given femiconsistently
nine attributes: softness, grace, delicacy, and tenderness. Pontormo died of dropsy, a disease that deformed his body,
making it look like the figures in his late, failed work, "without proportion," with a large torso and small arms and legs.9
Death, in other words, is the final act that reveals the
ultimate truth about an artist's work. "Look at a man in the
midst of trouble and danger facing death," wrote Lucretius,
"and you will learn in his hour of adversity what he really
is.... The mask is torn off and reality remains."'? Death
provides an explanatory mirror of artistic practice or, in
Caravaggio's case, malpractice. What distinguishes Caravaggio's death from those in other early modern art biographies
is the number of stories told and the variety of their signification. Every seventeenth-century poem and biography that
mentions his death gives it meaning-in each case a different
meaning-with evidence manipulated, sometimes wildly and
fancifully, in order to prove a particular point. Baglione
concluded that "he died as miserably as he lived"; its corollary
might be that "he died as badly as he painted."
Various articles and books, notably by Denis Mahon, Maurizio Calvesi, and Vincenzo Pacelli, have been devoted to
Caravaggio's death." The results of their remarkable archival
studies have extended our factual knowledge about Caravaggio's last few months of life far beyond what we knew from
seicento biographers. Because these documents generally
confirm the accuracy of Baglione, Bellori, and Filippo
Baldinucci, and because they supplement the biographies
with new information, they seem to have rendered the biographies redundant. This may be true if the biographies are
read only for factual information. However, considering the
literary fabric of the biographies provides new insight. The
titles of the articles by Mahon, Calvesi, and Pacelli, "Caravaggio's Death" or "The Death of Caravaggio," make the obvious
clear-that Caravaggio died in only one way-and espouse a
more problematic objective: that as historians they aspire to
document the singularity of historical events. I propose in-
CARAVAGGIO'S
stead to look at the literary forms of biographical contentthe container instead of its contents-and
to examine "CaraDeaths"
as
one
means
to illuminate
(among many)
vaggio's
seicento understanding of his art.
Fictionalizing artists' lives can also make them conform to
and explain the visual evidence of their art. Artists may be the
creators of their work, in which "every painter paints himself," but biographers sometimes inverted the process and
created artists in the image of their work, as Vasari did with
the cowering Spinello and the murderous Andrea del Castagno. Vasari wants us to believe that art imitates life-that
because Spinello was mugged he therefore painted figures
shying away-but actually he often made life conform to art.
Castagno never murdered Domenico Veneziano, but as a
story it allowed Vasari to polemicize the artistic contest between Florence and Venice, to trace the genealogy of oil
painting, and to explain why Castagno painted in a "crude
and harsh" style.
The accounts of Caravaggio's death can be divided into two
categories: mythologizing poems and stories with little or no
claim to truth telling, and biographies whose authors believed (or wanted us to believe) in their historical accuracy.
The first category of texts, being obviously fictional, can be
more easily read as interpretations of art. Giambattista
Marino, writing at the time of Caravaggio's death, imagined
"Nature" and "Death" conspiring in "a cruel plot" against
Caravaggio because "Nature feared being surpassed by your
hand in every image" and Death resented how "your brush
returned to life... as many men as his scythe could cut
down."12 In other words, Caravaggio died because of his
artistic success as a naturalist. Caravaggio's friend and the
author of his epitaph, Marzio Milesi, wrote a sonnet likening
him to Icarus because both flew too high and were struck
down.13 Milesi might have had Icarus's hubris in mind, a
fitting model for Caravaggio's sometimes overbearing arrogance, but, given his intention to extol "this great genius," he
probably means Caravaggio's flight as one of artistic talent
and imagination. Without the high-flying wings of genius, he
would not have perished. Again, the same moral pertains:
artistic success leads to death. Caravaggio challenges Nature
and is, in turn, killed by her.
Joachim von Sandrart's story, published in 1675 but possibly recalling stories he heard in Rome from 1629 to 1635,
turns Caravaggio's death into a generational rite of passage
and artistic progress. One day Caravaggio challenged his
former employer to a duel in order to settle "an old quarrel."
The Cavaliere Giuseppe Cesare d'Arpino refused on the
grounds that it would be undignified for a nobleman to fight
someone beneath his station, a response that cut Caravaggio
deeper than any sword could. He sold his belongings and set
out for Malta in order to become a knight: "As soon as
Caravaggio was knighted, he hurried back to Rome with the
intention of settling his quarrel with d'Arpino. This haste,
however, resulted in a high fever and he arrived in Arpino
(the very birthplace of his adversary) as a sick man and died."
Sandrart's version of Caravaggio's death took root only in
France. Roger de Piles has Caravaggio murder Ranuccio
Tomassoni as a surrogate for the Cavaliere d'Arpino before
challenging d'Arpino directly to a duel.14 And in 1832 Felix
DEATHS
451
Pyat elaborated the account with invented dialogue that
transforms Caravaggio into a proto-Romantic hero.15
Sandrart's story of Caravaggio's death is easily interpreted
as an apologue rather than as biography because there is so
little ground to confuse moral and factual truths. The allegorical content is too close to the surface, and its applicability
as art criticism too obvious, to be confusing. It is really
concerned with the life of art more than the life of artists.
Sandrart has Caravaggio act oedipally in desiring the death of
his former boss and capo of the old guard in order to dramatize a generational passage from late Mannerism to Baroque
naturalism.
In biographies with truth claims Caravaggio's death becomes murkier and more interesting, where the space between art and life is more permeable. The ur-text for most
later biographies was published in 1642 by Giovanni Baglione, Caravaggio's erstwhile follower and later a plaintiff in
court against him:
When Caravaggio went ashore he was mistakenly arrested.
He was held for two days in prison and when he was
released, the felucca was no longer to be found. This made
him furious and in his desperation he started out along
the beach under the merciless rays of the sun trying to
catch sight of the vessel that was carrying his belongings [le
sue robe]. Finally he reached a village on the shore and was
put to bed with a malignant fever. He was completely
abandoned and within a few days he died as miserably as
he lived.16
In writing this account, Baglione adhered to various notices
that began to circulate just days after Caravaggio's death.17
An announcement addressed to the duke of Urbino, for
example, tells him that "Michelangelo da Caravaggio, the
famous painter, died at Port'Ercole, while he was on the way
from Naples to Rome because a pardon had been granted
him by His Holiness from the sentence of banishment which
he was under for the capital crime [of murder]."18 And a
letter from the bishop of Caserta to Scipione Borghese specifies Caravaggio's itinerary, his mode of transport, and the
sequence ofjail and release:
Caravaggio did not die at Procida, but at Port'Ercole,
because, having arrived by felucca at Palo, forced to port by
high seas, he was imprisoned by that captain and the
felucca returned to Naples. Caravaggio remained jailed
until he was released following payment of a large sum of
money. By land, and possibly by foot, he made his way to
Port'Ercole where, sick, he died.'9
From these and similar reports, Baglione learned the means
of transport (a felucca, an all-purpose shipping tub), the
episode of imprisonment and release, and the final trek on
foot to Port'Ercole, where Caravaggio died. This, however,
does not stop them from being meaningful. Whatever factual
basis they might have, and despite their primary intention to
transmit information reliably, the seeds of narrative are
planted by these reports that would later blossom into fiction
in the biographies.
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3
2 Portraitof NicolasPoussin,from Bellori, Le vite,Rome: Mascardi,
1672, woodcut (photo: Florence, Kunsthistorisches Institut)
3 Portraitof AgostinoCarracci,from Bellori, Le vite, 1672,
woodcut (photo: Florence, Kunsthistorisches Institut)
The reports to Scipione Borghese and the duke of Urbino
present motive and causality with a succinct irony. Caravaggio
died on his way home after the death sentence had been
lifted. Absolution by the pope precipitates death, which provides closure to murder. The death sentence is executed not
by law but by nature. Reprieve and retribution stand side by
side. Intended or not, the reports embed irony into the facts,
and it was this literary trope that Baglione most conspicuously
developed in his biography. Because the biographies by Baglione and Bellori conform so closely to documentary sources,
it is easy to overlook their embellishments to the story: the
disembarkation in the midday sun; the summer sun as a
dramatic persona ("il Sol Leone" also appears in Baglione's
story of Raffaelle Motta's death),20 and the desperate beach
trek. Given the circumstances and time of year, these elements are entirely possible, but then so is an evening disembarkation or a cloudy day. With the moralizing epithet "he
died as miserably as he lived," Baglione (who personally
contributed to that misery) tells us that Caravaggio's death is
a fitting conclusion to his life, not only the final chapter of a
violent life but also a just retribution for the damage that he
had inflicted on art, causing "the very ruination of painting."
Bellori's Caravaggio, someone we might call Caravaggio Iscariot. When Bellori chose portraits for his Lives, by a still
unidentified artist, he or his amanuensis decided to include
such props as a book for Nicolas Poussin and a burin for
Agostino Carracci (Figs. 2, 3). Caravaggio's tool is a sword,
whose hilt he grasps (Fig. 4). It introduces readers to his
status as murderer and repeat offender attacking and threatening rivals, police, a notary, and many others, and to his
status as knight (and then excommunicant) of the order of
Malta. His furrowed brow, thicket of dark hair, bushy arched
eyebrows, and coarsened features, as well as the sidelong shift
of his eyes and their accusatory glare, give him a sinister air.
By comparison, the eleven other artists portrayed in the Lives
look positively friendly, or at least pensive and adherent to
codes of polite behavior. Bellori's suspicious and threatening
Caravaggio removes any vestige of innocence found in Ottavio Leoni's portrait of his friend (Biblioteca Marucelliana,
Florence; Fig. 5) designed, possibly, for a suspended series of
biographies, Gareggio pittorico, that Giulio Cesare Gigli was
writing in 1614-15.21 Leoni defined Caravaggio primarily
through his dark curly hair, beard, and eyebrows, much as
"Luca the barber" did when he described Caravaggio in court
as "a large young man, around twenty or twenty-five years,
with a thin black beard, black eyes with bushy eyebrows,
dressed in black, in a state of disarray, with threadbare black
hose, and a mass of black hair, long over his forehead."22
Unruly curly hair defined Caravaggio's appearance for Gigli
as well.23
Caravaggio Iscariot
Who was this Caravaggio who could destroy painting and
deserved to die miserably? Many different Caravaggios have
been proposed by art historians, and I do not plan to add
another one; instead, I would like to introduce you briefly to
CARAVAGGIO'S
DEATHS
453
4 Portraitof Caravaggio,from Bellori,
Le vite, 1672, woodcut (photo:
Florence, Kunsthistorisches Institut)
By manipulating Caravaggio's face in this way, Bellori's
portraitist helped him to justify the conclusion that physiognomy is destiny, both in art and in life:
Caravaggio's style corresponded to his physiognomy and
appearance. He had a dark complexion and dark eyes,
black hair and eyebrows, and this appears again, even
Later, driven by his peculiar
naturally, in his painting....
he
himself
temperament,
gave
up to the dark style, and to
the expression of his turbulent and contentious nature.
Because of his temperament, Caravaggio was forced to
leave Milan and his homeland and then to flee from Rome
and from Malta, to go into hiding in Sicily, to live in
danger in Naples and to die wretchedly on a deserted
beach.24
Physiognomics interprets the structure of nature-"the faces
and order of the whole world"-in order to divine the "invisible world" from the visible.25 It thus functioned in the seicento as a semiotic system that structurally resembled style
analysis: if inner realities of character are projected outward-"all animate bodies are material portraits of their
souls"26-then the process must work in reverse, and the
inner reality therefore can be adduced by examining external
form. According to Camillo Baldi, inventor of graphology
and translator of the pseudo-Aristotelian Physiognomica (Bologna, 1621), physiognomy and style were closely related.27
Styles of handwriting are like faces, he tells us: each is different and yet beautiful; those differences are easier to observe
than to describe and explain; both express many things at
once.28 Physiognomic interpretations often suit the needs of
their inventors, but in Bellori's case the attributes and significations conform to contemporary stereotypes: men with
thick, dark, curly hair and arched eyebrows are disposed
toward anger.29
Dark in aspect, character, dress, and style, Caravaggio completed his public persona with his faithful companion, a black
dog named Crow (a bird that brings bad tidings).30 By comparison, Gigli's Caravaggio lacks the consistency of Bellori's
454
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SEPTEMBER
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5 Ottavio Leoni, Portraitof Caravaggio.
Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana
(photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY)
caricature: his face is described as pale instead of darkly
complected, his sunken eyes are lively, and instead of a sword,
Gigli gives him a golden baton, which can be used to "loosen,
tighten and direct as it pleases him."31 Caravaggio's portrait
in the Vite thus exaggerates his dark side: coarser in feature,
untrustworthy in expression, and darkly complected, he resemblesJudas. Somewhere between 1615 and 1673, Caravaggio became an archetype. Mythologized, Caravaggio lost
some of his humanity but gained a signifying power as a
morally and artistically bad artist. Ethics and aesthetics wove
biography and art criticism together in Vasari's Vite, but
nowhere are they fused together so thoroughly as in the
seicento lives of Caravaggio. Great Renaissance artists (Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, and Titian) were deemed to be
divine, saintly, and even Christ-like; Caravaggio, to the contrary, was dangerous and evil in both life and art. If Renaissance art historiography is an adaptation of hagiography,
wherein a new literary genre finds its themes in an ancient
form,32 then might there not be a place for a Judas figure?
When Bellori called the twelve artists of his Vite eleven
saints (santi) or venerables (venerabili)and one bad man (cattivo), it is clear that among these twelve apostles Caravaggio
played the role of Judas.33 He was also, to use another of
Bellori's metaphors, a "pernicious poison" who caused "great
CARAVAGGIO'S
damage" and "havoc"to painting.34In life he was a traitor to
friends and admirers, turning against Guido Reni, Giovanni
Baglione, and supposedly Guercino. Even before the famous
murder, Mariano da Pasqualone called him "an excommunicant and cursed man." According to police records, the
painter Girolamo Stampa called him a "traitor"as he was
fending off Caravaggio'sblows one night, just before some
butchers rushed in with lanterns to illuminate the crime
scene. Christ's betrayal (John 18.1-9) seeped into Stampa's
description (a nocturnal surprise; a group with lanterns encircling an innocent), where Stampa performs the role of
Christ and Caravaggioof Judas.35
Poussin thought that Caravaggiohad betrayedart, accusing
him of having "destroyedpainting," and according to Baglione, he was not alone in this view. Francesco Albani blamed
Caravaggio for "the decline and total ruin" of painting.36
Federico Borromeo thought that Caravaggio's"tavernsand
debauchery"lacked beauty and that this made him the "opposite" of Raphael.37Vincenzo Carducho called Caravaggio
the "anti-Christ"and the "anti-Michelangelo"because he led
followers awayfrom the truth.38If Raphael can be identified
with Christ, a notion popularized by Vasari's story of his
death, then Caravaggio,who "despises"and "disdains"Raphael, is assigned an analogous relationship as Judas to
Christ.Just as he rejected artistic authorities (antiquity and
Raphael), so, too, did he deny Church and family, according
to a reliable story told by Giulio Mancini. Lorenzo Pasinelli
called Caravaggio's tenebrism one of two "new heresies"
(nuoveeresie).Caravaggio'sdeath was not a suicide, but like
Judas he died "alone and friendless"in a "deserted"place.39
Only one other Italian Renaissanceor Baroque artist,to my
knowledge, was presented as a Judas. According to Vasari,
Andrea del Castagno "painted himself with the face of Judas
Iscariot, whom he resembled both in appearance and in
deed."40Castagno'snefarious deeds, such as his alleged murder of Domenico Veneziano, are probablyfictional, but their
similarity to Caravaggio'slife is striking. Both lost their fathers at an early age; both slashed and scratched the work of
fellow artists; both were murderers and generally treated
others belligerently;both loved the art of painting "violently"
and abused artists and critics physically and verbally. Their
dark and troubled characters permeate their styles. Castagno's figures acted with the "vehemence"of their maker; his
coloring was "crude and harsh."
Lost Baggage
I would now like to pose two questions: Why was Caravaggio
running after his belongings when he died? And why did he
die "under the merciless rays of the sun"? How can these
narrative motifs serve analogically as symptoms of his paintings? By chasing his belongings and by succumbing to the
sun, Caravaggio enacts his failures as an artist. Baldinucci
(1688) and Francesco Sussino (ca. 1724) followed Baglione's
version of the run in the sun: they mentioned the beach
(twice each) and sunstroke.41 Bellori also adopted Baglione's
version in most of its details, even borrowing key words and
expressions, and established it as canonical for over a century:42
DEATHS
455
When he went ashore the Spanish guard arrested him by
mistake, taking him for another Cavaliere, and held him
prisoner. Although he was soon released, the feluccathat
was carryinghim and his possessions was no longer to be
found. Thus, in a state of anxiety and desperation he ran
along the beach in the full heat of the summer sun, and
when he reached Port'Ercole he collapsed and was seized
by a malignant fever. He died within a few days at about
forty years of age in 1609, a lamentable year for painting
since it also took Annibale Carracciand Federico Zuccaro.
Thus, Caravaggiowas forced to end his life and was buried
on a deserted beach.43
All four biographies specify the beach as the location of
Caravaggio'sfinal, fatal run. (Actually,the coastline between
Palo and Port'Ercole is more often rocky and swampy than
sandy.) From Dante's Infernoto Thomas Mann's Death in
Veniceand Paul Theroux's MosquitoCoast,the beach has been
a place of death, isolation, loss, and punishment.44 Bellori
added two elements to Baglione: first, he tidied up the uneven edges of history by having Caravaggio, Carracci, and
Zuccaro all die in the same year, simultaneously closing a
historical era and three artists' lives,45and second, Bellori
clarified the reason for Caravaggio'sarrest as a case of mistaken identity. With Caravaggio'swrongful arrest,where "the
Spanish guard arrested him by mistake, taking him for another Cavaliere,"Bellori charges the episode with irony, at
least when it is read in light of Caravaggio'sfrustrated ambitions to be recognized as a nobleman, an ambition fully
documented by Roman police records. For Sandrart this
misbegotten ambition initiated the sequence of events that
supposedly led to his death.
Most artists died uneventfully at the hands of Baglione,
usually being "delivered gratefully into the hands of God."
Only seven artists died badly; all were naturalists of some
kind, and four were devout caravaggisti who, like their men-
tor, died young. Valentin de Boulogne, who went out drinking and smoking with his "gang"one summer night, became
so "enflamed"that on returning home he found it in flames.
After hours spent quelling the fire with cold water, "he succumbed to a fever so malign that in just a few days he expired
in the icy embrace of death."46Bartolomeo Manfredi,whose
paintings were often mistaken for Caravaggio's,"died young,
full of wickedness that consumed him in the end" and "at a
young age filled with evil."47Orazio Borgianni died from
greed, "struck down even before knowing it." Matteo da
Leccio brought death upon himself because, "seekingriches,
he became impoverished and ended his life miserably in
lands far away."48
By giving Caravaggio'sdeath a materialistmotive, running
under the sun to retrieve his worldly possessions, Baglione
implied that his goal in art was similarly mistaken: chasing
nature's superficial appearance instead of its hidden ideals.
Bellori attached Caravaggio'srejection of classicalideals (antiquity and Raphael) to a story of him choosing, randomly, a
gypsy in the piazza as his model:
He not only ignored the most excellent marbles of the
ancients and the famous paintings of Raphael, but he
despised them, and nature alone became the object of his
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brush. Thus, when the most famous statues of Phidias and
Glycon were pointed out to him as models for his painting,
he gave no other reply than to extend his hand toward a
crowd of men, indicating that nature had provided him
sufficiently with teachers. To prove his words he called a
gypsy who happened to be passing in the street and, taking
her to his lodgings, he drew her in the act of fortunetelling, as is the custom of these women of the Egyptian
race.49
In this story, as with most concerning Caravaggio, he is deprived of verbal language and has to resort to manual gestures. Wordless and implicitly unlearned, Caravaggio manages to quote Eupompus's famous gesture: "being asked
which of the former Artificers a man had best to follow,
answered pointing at a multitude of men that Nature itself
was rather to be followed than any Artificer."50
Because Caravaggio's art depended entirely on the presence of the physical object or model, "imitating only what
appears before his eyes" according to Poussin, Bellori, and
others, he was thought to be helpless without his models and
props: "He claimed that he imitated his models so closely that
he never made a single brushstroke that he called his own but
said rather that it was nature's....
The moment the model
was taken from him, his hand and his mind became empty."
Or, according to Luigi Scaramuccia, "he did not know how to
make anything without the actual thing in front of him."
Malvasia tells the story of Leonello Spada posing for Caravaggio's Death ofJohn the Baptist: afraid that Spada might flee and,
in effect, escape with his art, Caravaggio imprisoned him in a
room until he had finished.51 If things with physical presence-models
and props- capture the essence of Caravagart
in
the
minds of his critics, then his lost possessions
gio's
exact a terrible justice from a materialist painter.
Other artists than Borgianni, Leccio, and Caravaggio revealed their style by dying of cupidity. Pinturicchio, who in
life had sprinkled so much gold over the walls of Siena and
Rome, died of envy when some friars discovered a trove
of gold hidden in the room where he had been sleeping:
"he took it so much to heart, being unable to get it out of
his mind, that it was the death of him." According to Giulio
Mancini, Caravaggio's onetime physician, Caravaggio's death
most resembled that of his compatriot Poliodoro da Caravaggio, even though in life the virtuous Poliodoro could not have
been more different: "It is worthy of reflection to see such
similar ends of two paesani and artists, to see them die an
almost identical death." Mancini is referring to Vasari's tale
of a "strange" and "dreadful" death involving a covetous
studio assistant who "bore greater love for his master's money
than for his master" and decided to strangle Poliodoro as part
of an elaborate, failed robbery. What Mancini seems to be
saying is that Poliodoro and Michelangelo shared a birthplace and deaths driven by greed. Actually, the death that
most resembles Caravaggio's, at least in my view, is Terence's
as told by Suetonius. Frequently accused of plagiarism"covetting the possessions of other writers"-the playwright
died suitably "after falling ill from grief and annoyance at the
loss of his baggage, which he had sent by ship [when he was
returning to Rome] and with it all of the new plays that he
had written."52 Caravaggio stole from nature, or so his critics
alleged, and finally nature stole from Caravaggio.
Baldinucci, like Sandrart, identified the originating motives of Caravaggio's death as social vanity. He captured Caravaggio's self-delusion by referring to the proverb 'You can
deck out an ass with a fancy saddle and gold braids as if it
were a noble horse, but once it brays you know it is just an
ass."53 Baldinucci makes two points in citing this proverb:
first, that the exterior sign of nobility (the medal itself of the
Cross of Malta) did not change Caravaggio's brutish inner
reality; according to Sussino, Caravaggio mistook the sign of
nobility for reality and, after being knighted, he paraded his
medal in front of everyone and became "blinded by the
madness of thinking himself a nobleman born."54 Second,
that the quest itself for the Cross of Malta signified Caravaggio's failure as an artist to look beyond the surface of things.
The higher artistic realm of beauty, like the higher social
order of nobility, was beyond his grasp. "He abandoned,"
according to Giovanni Battista Agucchi, "the Idea of beauty,
inclined instead to follow only similitude."55
Irony is the literary conceit that binds these stories together: Caravaggio seeks in life what is absent in his art,
valuing material possessions and outward signs over life and
inner reality. He is, in some way, an agent of his own death
and dies enacting an essential characteristic of himself, much
as the ever curious Pliny died in trying to get a closer look at
the exploding Vesuvius. Diogenes subjected several of his
philosophers to deaths that enacted voluntarily their ideas.
The vegetarian Pythagorus, believer in reincarnation, chose
death by fire rather than trampling through a field of beans,
"either because beans are like genitals or because they are
like the gates of Hades."56 Corporality triumphs over spirituality in Renaissance deaths of philosophers, perhaps nowhere
more mordantly than in Piero Valeriano's biography of Giorgio Valla, who, before going to lecture on the immortality of
the spirit, died "while evacuating his excrement...
[when]
he expelled his spirit too."57 And according to Paolo Giovio,
the physician and anatomist Gabriele Zerbi was dismembered
by the Turks, a just punishment according to a former student for "cutting up cadavers incorrectly."58
By the seventeenth century this kind of black humor was
codified in "Playful epitaphs," as Giovanni Francesco Loredano and Pietro Michiele called them in their Cimiterio
(Venice, 1674), where they dispatch people with ironically
suitable deaths.59 Irony also centers much of the art criticism
itself. For example, when Bellori has Caravaggio reject art as
a model for art by pointing to the piazza crowd as his models,
he actually makes Caravaggio reenact Eupompus's famous
gesture. Caravaggio may think of himself as a rebel, but really
he is just another aspirant to ancient glory. Federico Zuccaro
adopts a similar ironic ploy when he dismisses Caravaggio's
allegedly "never-seen-before" style as just an atavistic recycling
of Giorgione.
The Killing Sun
Writers and artists whose flames burn brightly often die, like
Caravaggio, exposed to the "merciless rays of the sun." Virgil,
for example, visited Megara on his journey back to Rome
"where, in a very hot sun, he was taken with a fever" and died
shortly thereafter. Correggio also died when "placing the
CARAVAGGIO'S
DEATHS
457
6 Michelangelo da
Caravaggio, Calling of
Saint Matthew.Rome,
S. Luigi dei Francesi
(photo: Scala/Art
Resource, NY)
money on his back, he set out to walk [to Correggio] on foot;
but being smitten by the heat of the sun, which was very great,
and drinking water to refresh himself, he was seized by pleurisy and had to take to his bed in a raging fever, nor did he
ever raise his head from it."60Raffaelle Motta supposedly died
of a "malign fever" after his return to Rome "in the hot
weather of the Sol Leone."61Transposed to Caravaggio, this
pseudomedical mythologizing of genius takes on different
meanings. In Milesi's poem, the sun kills the Icarus Caravaggio, or, as Giambattista Marino put it, nature kills its emulator. For Baglione, Bellori, and Baldinucci, the sun conspires
to kill the "dark" painter. Exposed to the sun in a "public
place" and dying "alone and friendless in the open air," it
seemed to Baldinucci a fitting end for the dark, secretive
painter who placed his figures in "cellars... without much
sunlight" (Fig. 6).62 He derived this conclusion after reading
Bellori, who recorded a common complaint, one that he
agreed with, that Caravaggio "did not know how to come out
of the cellar" and that "he never brought his figures out into
the daylight but placed them in the dark brown atmosphere
of a closed room."63 Caravaggio deemed blue pigment to be
"the poison of colors," and for this reason one never finds
"the clear blue air," only black ground and black background.64 Exposed to the sun on the beach, "alone and
friendless," Caravaggio thus found himself in a hostile environment, fatally different from the one that he created for
himself in painting.
The membrane that loosely separates art and life in physiognomic and other psychobiographic theories of style is
more permeable than ever here. It resembles in affect the
death of Francesco Borromini, who, preceding his suicide,
"twisted his mouth in a thousand horrible grimaces" and
"rolled his eyes," becoming like his allegedly distorted buildings.65 Borromini in his death throes did not literally resemble his buildings, but the architect and his architecture are
merged by means of an overlapping lexicon. Caravaggio
criticism often drew on metaphors of abnormal psychology
and unethical behavior in ways that loaded pictorial forms
with biographical content. His provocative art helped to inspire such art-world neologisms as shuttered (serrato),shatter
(fracasso), and sly and malicious or in the lingo of thieves
(furbesco), as if a new language had to be found to describe a
new and challenging art form. Caravaggio's tenebrism was
dangerous and subversive, an offensive weapon used to "destroy" art, to anticipate that powerful metaphor used by Poussin, Albani, and others against Caravaggio.
The leonine sun and the dark painter derive from Horace,
Quintilian, and others who oppose public-private, bright-
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dark, nature-art, outside-inside. Tacitus, for example, takes
the side of an older educational system where students "carry
on their studies in the light of open day" and contrasts it to
the modern system of oratory where students practice only in
the protective shade of academia.66 Annibale Carracci first
applied this dialectic to Caravaggio, if we are to accept the
veracity of a quote in Malvasia (there are doubts that Annibale actually spoke these words, but even if they were invented by Malvasia this does not affect my conclusions):
Is there anything so marvelous here? Did it seem to you
that this was something new? I tell you that all those fellows
with the never-seen-before style that they themselves invented will always have the same reception when they
appear and will have no less praise. I know another way to
make a big splash, in fact to beat and mortify that fellow
[Caravaggio]; I would like to counterpose to that fierce
[fiero] coloring one that is completely tender [tenero]. Does
he use a falling, shuttered light? I would like it to be open
and direct. Does he cover up the difficult parts of art in
nighttime shadows? I, by the bright light of noon, would
like to reveal the most learned and erudite of my studies.67
The competitive, almost combative, stance shown by Annibale-"I know another way... to beat and mortify that fellow"-may sound like Caravaggio himself, but actually it is
a display of humanist erudition that plays against the popular construction of Caravaggio as an unlearned painter.
Francesco Algarotti, working from an adulterated version of
Malvasia's quotation, recognized Cicero as one of Annibale's
sources, and it is not too hard to find Federico Zuccaro's
response to Caravaggio and Horace's call for oratory to be
exposed to the full light of day lurking beneath his words as
well.68 Like Tacitus, Annibale associates modernity with secrecy and shadows that hide artistic defects. When Annibale
proposes to expose Caravaggio's shady ignorance to his
"bright light of noon," he casts himself in the same role that
Bellori, Malvasia, and others gave to him as the enlightener of
art after years of Mannerist darkness; in the words of Scaramuccia, the Carracci were "bright, shining Suns who dispelled every turbid and shadowy (tenebroso)suspicion of ignorance."69
Annibale proposed to "beat and mortify" Caravaggio by
means of painting, adopting a visual form of critique much as
he did when he ended a learned dispute about the Laocoonby
making a drawing. Annibale often used visual instead of
verbal statements to argue with painters. To his cousin Ludovico he wrote, "Let us apply this beautiful style [of Correggio's] in order to one day mortify this beret-wearing rabble
that attacks us." And later in Rome he faked some old masters
in order to humiliate local painters who resented his intrusion into their domain. Despite his comment on this occasion
that "we painters ... have to speak with our hands," his initial
foray into Caravaggio criticism rests on a cleverly deployed
word.70
"Shuttered" (serrato)belongs to a subset of psychologically
charged terms that attacks Caravaggio's tenebrism on the
basis of biography.71 For example, Malvasia accused Caravaggio of painting in a "dark and hunted [cacciata] style" that has
a "violent" (violento) light and creates a great "clash" or "up-
roar" (fracasso) of light and shadow.72 Other critics called his
tenebrism "cutting" (tagliente) and "gloomy," "savage," and
"dirty" (in its many senses of turbid, troublesome, or obscene).73 Militaristic and physically aggressive metaphors enliven the paintings with an artistic psychomachia that makes
them appear more vivid and animated than a more neutral
language would. According to Giovanni Battista Passeri, Caravaggio's "robust" style "charges ahead" and "attacks" contemporary painting.74 Not all artists lent themselves to this kind
of linguistic fusion of art and life, but, at least in Malvasia's
mind, the two were inextricably connected in Caravaggio's
case. In recounting how Caravaggio, after meeting Leonello
Spada, declared that he had found a man after his own heart,
Malvasia had to admit that he did not know whether Caravaggio was attracted to Spada's art or his character. Both were
equally "precipitous" and "dissolute."75
"Shuttered" refers most obviously to Caravaggio's cellar
locations, alluding to both artistic quality and social rank, to
his murky painted light and to his plebeian figures and
sensibility.76 According to the painter-theorist Giovanni Battista Volpato, the most conspicuous feature of Jacopo Bassano's late work was the serrated light that rakes across figures,
picks out prominences such as the crown of a head, a shoulder, or knee, and detaches them from the whole figure.
Caravaggio shared with Bassano more than a lume serratoin its
formal sense.77 Both were deemed to be base naturalists who
did not (or could not) improve on the appearance of physical
existence. Agucchi drew the two together syntactically and
stylistically when he called Bassano the Peiraikos of modern
painting and Caravaggio the new Demetrius.78
The socially based "shuttered" light of the basement also
conveyed a sinister private world closed to the public forum
of civilized behavior. It signaled a psychic space as much as a
physical and social space, where, for example, Caravaggio
could imprison Leonello to prevent his model from escaping.
The word serratorecruits an interlocking set of associations
including morbidity, danger, and secrecy, all connected to
aspects of Caravaggio's psychobiography, so that in looking at
his paintings we are reminded of the "shadows of the shuttered tomb."79
The "shuttered light" suggested seclusion and secrecy to
several of Caravaggio's critics in other ways. For Pellegrino
Antonio Orlandi, Caravaggio's cellar tenebrism fit the general category of "furtive painting" (un dipingerefurbesco),a style
that was intended to conceal shortcomings by means of cloaking shadows.80 As the root furbo indicates, his style is a cheat
because it enables him to avoid the difficulties of art (disegno,
anatomy, and perspective). Like "shuttered," the "furtive
style" refers simultaneously to biography and art criticism,
packing into a single word Caravaggio's masking shadows, his
fugitive life, his renditions of cheats in the Fortune-Tellerpaintings, and the ruffian flavor of his religious works all packed
together into a word.81 Francesco Algarotti took his "shuttered light" to be a visible symptom of Caravaggio's "surly"
(burbero)and "wild" (selvatico) character, thus bringing a serrated edge of menace and danger.
These cloaking, furtive, or shuttered shadows are variants
of another aesthetically and morally defective style that was
often attached to Caravaggio, the form-denying shadows
known as macchia, defined by Baldinucci as "a dense and
CARAVAGGIO'S
frightfully dark forest... where brutes and thieves hide in
the shadows [macchie] to engage in their malfeasance secretly,
as one says, to make whatever it may be alla macchia, that is,
to make it in hiding, secretly and furtively; thus of printers,
counterfeiters, and forgers who print and make money without any authorization, one says to print or mint alla macchia."82
Annibale proposed to expose the dark secrets of this defective style to the sun of his painting. The painter who
destroyed painting is himself destroyed when submitted to
Annibale's "bright light of noon." Baglione, Bellori, and
Baldinucci made him expire under the same consuming fire
that ignites a deadly fever and unmasks the failure of his art.
What might Caravaggio's response have been to Annibale's
challenge? There is no direct evidence, and what follows is
too contingent on a series of hypothetical suppositions to be
convincing. Still, the case deserves airing if for no other
reason than to encourage alternative readings. Just as Baglione, Bellori, and others mythologize Caravaggio as a "dark
painter," so Caravaggio himself engaged in a related selffashioning, as David Stone has recently shown.83 Caravaggio
did so by inserting his portrait into his paintings and by
adopting a style that would (in Baldinucci's words) "confirm
in himself that proverb that says that every painter paints
himself."84 If Annibale Carracci challenged Caravaggio's
tenebrism with a truth-filled painting of light on first seeing
Caravaggio's work, as Malvasia claimed for him, then we may
assume that the occasion was the first public exhibition of
Caravaggio's tenebrism, in the Contarelli Chapel paintings of
1600. When Annibale questions whether "this was something
new" and groups Caravaggio's work with other "fellows with
the never-seen-before style," he sounds very much like Federico Zuccaro responding to the Contarelli paintings: "What is
all the clamor about? ... I don't see anything here except the
thought of Giorgione. .. ."85Baglione claimed that this statement was made "while I was present." The Betrayal of Christ
(National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) was painted two years
later in 1602.86 In it, according to Roberto Longhi, we find
Caravaggio representing himself as the figure holding a lantern and illuminating the nighttime scene of Christ's betrayal.87 If this identification is correct, and scholars have accepted it with an uncritical alacrity, then Caravaggio might be
seen as casting himself in an opposing role as a latter-day
Diogenes seeking redemption and casting light on a deceptive and morally dark world.88 In this reading, however hypothetical it may be, Caravaggio presents himself not as the dark
painter who came into the world to "destroy painting" but as
another Carracci, savior of art, who shines the light of truth
into Mannerist obscurity.
Narcissism, Naturalism, and Death
I would like to conclude briefly with two overlooked seicento
sources on Caravaggio that pathologize his pictorial naturalism and iconographic morbidity as signs of narcissism. The
first is a book published in 1672 by a Theatine seminarian
from Syracuse, Ippolito Falcone (1623-1695), Narciso alfonte,
cioe l'uomo che si specchia nella propria miseria (Narcissus at the
spring, that is, man who regards the reflection of his own
wretchedness). The second is an engraved portrait of Caravaggio (Fig. 9) by Henri Simon Thomassin (1687-1741),
DEATHS
459
avowedly (but improbably) a copy after an original self-portrait. (Without further evidence, the designer will be called
"Thomassin.") Even without Falcone identifying Caravaggio
as a narcissistic painter or "Thomassin" depicting him absorbed in his mirror reflection, there is no lack of evidence
for such a diagnosis. According to Bellori, "Caravaggio did
not appreciate anyone but himself, calling himself a uniquely
faithful imitator of nature."89 Baglione's libel suit was based,
in part, on the belief that Caravaggio regarded his art as
unique and inimitable. According to him, Caravaggio "spoke
badly of the painters of the past, and also of the present, no
matter how distinguished they were, because he thought that
he alone had surpassed all the other artists in his profession."90 Despite Caravaggio's denial in court to this charge,
the evidence, both biographical and archival, supports Baglione. Narcissists were proud and arrogant, according to Tommaso Stigliani, just those qualities Baglione found in his
rival.91 When Caravaggio attacked Guido Reni for, allegedly,
"stealing my style," or when he locked Leonello Spada ("a
man after his own heart") in a room so that he could serve as
his model, Caravaggio was acting narcissistically.
Because narcissism is a universal and inevitable condition
that varies only in degree and kind, it cannot be limited to
these symptoms, nor do these symptoms always signal narcissism. However, with style, subject, and character converging
on morbidity, and with Caravaggio's repeated insertion of
himself into his paintings, a narcissistic profile emerges. His
habit of painting himself might have been motivated at first
by exigency, but by the time he painted the Betrayal of Christ
and David and Goliath (Galleria Borghese, Rome), he had
more personal motives, whose psychological origins can only
be guessed.92 One intriguing possibility proposed by Michael
Fried is that Caravaggio was showing himself in the act of
painting, simultaneously creating and regarding himself like
Narcissus at the pond.93 Many other early modern painters
engaged in automimesis, depicting themselves either as incidental observers of an event, as Caravaggio did in the Martyrdomof Saint Matthew (S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome) and in
the Betrayal of Christ, or as principal characters, as in Sick
Bacchus (Galleria Borghese) or as Goliath in David and Goliath. However, Caravaggio did so with greater frequency, to a
degree that it personalized his art in ways that fascinate
scholars, artists, and novelists today. His art was deeply personal and recalled for Baldinucci the proverb concerning
automimesis:
One can pardon Caravaggio for his style. Whereas he
wanted to confirm in himself that proverb that says that
every painter paints himself since, if one observes the way
that he talked, one finds something of that mentioned
above. If we turn to the behavior of this person, we see
there an over-the-top extravagance. It is not an understatement to say that, wanting to nourish his arrogance especially after being granted the dignity of knighthood, he
dressed as a nobleman, but this did not change him since
he still behaved like a brute and was negligent in hygiene
and eating habits.94
Baldinucci's proverb that "every painter paints himself" began circulating in the circles of Cosimo de' Medici, Angelo
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7 Caravaggio, Burial of
Saint Lucy. Syracuse,
S. Lucia al Sepolcro
(photo: Scala/Art
Resource, NY)
Poliziano, and Leonardo, serving different functions for different writers. For Cosimo and Poliziano, it was a psychological projection of one's character onto the surrounding
world: "One would rather forget a hundred charities than
one insult and that the offender never forgives and that every
painter paints himself."95 Despite overwhelming evidence to
the contrary-one
hundred acts of kindness versus one insult-an "offender" will form his worldview around the exceptional, rather than the usual, because it matches his na-
ture. The anticipatory attacks of Caravaggio, a frequent and
ready offender, exemplify this cognitive aberration. Leonardo took the proverb in both its literal and psychological
senses:
It is a fault in the extreme of painters to repeat the same
movements, the same faces and the same style of drapery
in one and the same narrative painting and to make most
of the faces resemble their master, which is a thing I have
CARAVAGGIO'S
often wondered at, for I have known some who, in all their
figures seem to have portrayed themselves from life, and
in them one may recognize the attitudes and manners of
their maker. If he is quick of speech and movement his
figures are similar in their quickness, and if the master is
devout his figures are the same with their necks bent, and
if the master is a good-for-nothing his figures seem laziness
itself portrayed from life. If the master is badly proportioned, his figures are the same. And if he is mad, his
narrative will show irrational figures, not attending to what
they are doing, who rather look about themselves, some
this way and some that, as if in a dream. And thus each
peculiarity in a painting has its prototype in the painter's
own peculiarity. I have often pondered the cause of this
defect and it seems to me that we may conclude that the
very soul which rules and governs each body directs our
judgment before it is our own. Therefore it has completed
the figure of a man in a way that it has judged looks good,
be it long, short, or snub-nosed. And in this way its height
and shape are determined, and this judgment is powerful
enough to move the arm of the painter and makes him
repeat himself and it seems to this soul that this is the true
way of representing a man and that those who do not do
as it does commit an error. If it finds someone who resembles the body it has composed, it delights in it and often
falls in love with it. And for this reason many fall in love
with and marry women who resemble them, and often the
children that are born to such people look like their
parents.96
His explanation, derived from Dante's theory of love that "we
love those who look like us," operates within the arena of
narcissistic love without, however, explicitly mentioning it by
name. At the time when Baldinucci applied the proverb to
Caravaggio, seicento art writers had used it to describe involuntary self-portraiture both of the artist's physical and psychological selves.97 It was always regarded as a personal or
artistic failure, with the interesting exception of women artists: "Do not wonder that she [Lavinia Fontana] paints so
beautifully because she paints herself being herself so beautiful."98 Baldinucci suggests, however, that Caravaggio's automimesis was not so much an autonomic reflex as a selffashioned artistic persona that played on his infamous public
misdeeds: "he wanted to confirm in himself the proverb that
Whereas other
says that every painter paints himself...."9
in
a
failure
of
themselves
recognition and
painters may paint
his
own nature" as
"driven
Baldinucci's
will,
by
Caravaggio,
Bellori noted, chose his course of action.
Falcone called Narciso alfonte a book on "a modern plague
of narcissism." His theme was simple and insistent: by indulging in self-contemplation and an absorption with material
things, mankind overlooks the spiritual and is unprepared
for death when it arrives swiftly and inevitably. What we
take to be reality-the sensory, material world-is nothing
more than "a self-admiration in the clear and transparent
spring."100 Natural historians like Pliny died, according to
Falcone, because they were so absorbed in nature that they
did not recognize their own looming mortality, and poets like
Torquato Tasso were so enraptured with their own verses that
they disregarded the world around them and stumbled upon
DEATHS
461
8 Attributed to Caravaggio, Narcissus.Rome, Galleria
Nazionale d'Arte Antica (photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY)
death.101 For painters, naturalism was the greatest signifier of
mortality, and Caravaggio was the greatest naturalist.102 Recalling Leon Battista Alberti's story of painting's origins, with
Narcissus as the first painter ("What is painting other than a
similar embrace, with art, of the pool's surface?"), he calls
Narcissus the "great painter" who "portrayed himself in an
instant so naturally in the spring."'03 Narcissus failed to distinguish between a surface image and reality, just as (I might
add) Caravaggio was thought to have mistaken himself for a
nobleman once he had the Cross of Malta pinned to his
cloak. Caravaggio's failure, according to Falcone, was a denial
of anything that he could not see:
When Michelangelo da Caravaggio was asked to depict a
group of angels in the large space occupying the upper
portion of that famous painting [Burial of Saint Lucy, S.
Lucia al Sepolcro, Syracuse; Fig. 7] where people are
crying and gazing at the funeral of Saint Lucy, he responded that he didn't want to depict angels, saying: "I've
never seen them and so I don't know how to portray
them."104
With the blank wall looming above Saint Lucy and her
mourners, they seem entombed. No angels and, as Bellori
observed of Caravaggio in general, no heavens: "He never
used clear blue air in his pictures.. . .105
Narcissus and Caravaggio also represented for Falcone the
failure of humanity to recognize spirituality because both
462
ART BULLETIN
SEPTEMBER
2002
VOLUME
LXXXIV
NUMBER
3
I(ll)CU/ /)rda/tuC/U(
Il C/ ( /tL1C.
c-lalMeau
/h1'" (('Cnt
leuc.ti?
~pcif par ,e.,
,/Ct
'jOr,/t,c ;
..I(ot?1rctozcu/
;3 ."/)'/C
/aroc
>i' s(2.
/e
.
c' .)/r c )
<c/. a /)u r /s.
''i/n^ii
were suspended in an eternal present. Time served Falcone
as a metaphor of sensory deception and materialism: "The
past was an idea of the instability of the present. The present
exemplifies the transitoriness of the future. The future will be
a portrait of the vanity of the past and present....
Time is
a
other
than
moment
and
a
nothing
fleeting shadow
passing
of an imperceptible lie."'06 Narcissus "portrayed himself in an
CAla
',/;*/l
/t
7 ///I
.
'
9 Henri Simon Thomassin, Portraitof
Caravaggio.Washington, D.C., National
Gallery of Art, Gift of Ruth B.
Benedict (photo: ? 2001 Board of
Trustees, National Gallery of Art,
Washington)
instant" and then remained marooned in his mirror world
until he perished. He remained suspended, motionless, lest
with any movement he discover the truth of his situation, as
Philostratus pointed out:
You [Narcissus] do not realize that the water represents
you exactly as you are when you gaze upon it, nor do you
CARAVAGGIO'S
DEATHS
463
see through the artifice of the pool, though to do so you
have only to nod your head or change your expression or
slightly move your hand, instead of staying in the same
attitude.
This is how Caravaggio envisioned his Narcissus (Fig. 8),
frozen in symmetry, fixated on the image of himself that, in
Alberti's words, he "embraces." For Falcone, neither Narcissus nor Caravaggio could grasp the intangible or comprehend time. Both were tainted figures, deluded by superficial
appearances. The narcissistic rage that gripped Caravaggio in
his fatal chase after his property illuminates the proximity of
naturalism and mortality in his painting. According to the
seicento literary critic Tommaso Stigliani, the myth of Narcissus "clearly demonstrates the unhappy end of those who
love their things too much."'07
"Thomassin" arrived at similar conclusions about narcissism and death as primary attributes of Caravaggio's naturalism. His engraved Portrait of Caravaggio (Fig. 9), with its
mirror and skull, can be read at least two ways. A Falconebased reading would see Caravaggio narcissistically engaged
in his own reflection and hence negligent of the skull's
reminder of death. Caravaggio ignores his books, piled under
the skull, and instead gazes deeply at himself. A second
reading, not inconsistent with the first in that it also draws on
the iconography of vanitas, would see "Thomassin" constructing Caravaggio from Caravaggesque painted Mary Magdalens, such as one by Georges de La Tour (National Gallery
of Art, Washington, D.C.; Fig. 10). This is a more optimistic
version of Caravaggio, one that sees him as a repentant sinner
who reflects on himself with Christian knowledge. It is not
Mancini's Caravaggio, who, by denying his brother, rejects
the Church and its doctrine. Nor is it Sussino's Caravaggio,
who feigns ignorance of or need for holy water and who
"went about questioning our holy religion, for which he was
accused of being a disbeliever."108 Nor is it Falcone's Caravaggio, who denies the existence of angels. Rather, it is the
Caravaggio who, having killed Ranuccio Tomassoni, "fled
Rome and... went to Palestrina where he painted a Mary
Magdalen."109 In their accounts of Caravaggio's murder of
Tomassoni, Mancini, Baglione, and Bellori present a narrative sequence of destruction-creation, sin-repentance that implies a causality and intentionality on Caravaggio's part, an
act of contrition similar in type to his self-portrayal as the
decapitated Goliath.11l
"Thomassin's" Caravaggiocan be seen as a softening of the
artist's character during the eighteenth century, when the
dangers of Caravaggism had long ago receded. This softening
can be observed in the subtle corrections made to Bellori's
portrait of Caravaggio (Fig. 4) when it was reissued in 1728 as
part of an expanded edition of the Vite (Fig. 11). The more
sinister elements of his 1672 self have been edited out: the
sneer on his mouth; his arched eyebrows; his shifty, baggy
eyes; and his furrowed brow. In 1728 his character is carried
mostly by a natty coiffure that almost looks bewigged-a
more enlightened Caravaggio.
Philip Sohm has written booksand articles on Italian art, architecture, criticism,and theory,1500-1800. This articleexploressome of
10 Georges de La Tour, The RepentantMagdalen.Washington,
D.C., National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund (photo
? 2001 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art,
Washington)
the applications of style criticism to art biographythat emergedfrom
the writing of his bookStyle in the Art Theory of Early Modern
Italy (CambridgeUniversityPress, 2001) [Departmentof Fine Art,
Universityof Toronto, Toronto M5S 3G3 Canada].
Frequently Cited Sources
Baglione, Giovanni, Vitede'pittori,scultori,et architettidal Pontificatodi Gregorio
XIIIdel 1572fino a' tempidi Papa UrbanoVIIInel 1642 (Rome: Andrea Fei,
1642).
deldisegnodal Cimabuein qua,ed. Paola
Baldinucci,Filippo, Notiziede'professori
Barocchi, vol. 3 (Florence: SPES, 1975).
Bellori, Giovan Pietro, Le vitede'pittori,scultorie architettimodemi,ed. E. Borea
(Turin: Einaudi, 1976).
Falcone, Ippolito, Narcisoalfonte, cio l'uomochesi specchianellapropriamiseria
(1672), 4th ed. (Venice, 1702).
Malvasia,Carlo Cesare, Felsinapittrice:Vitede'pittoribolognesi(1678), ed. G. P.
Zanotti, 2 vols. (Bologna: Guidi all'Ancora, 1841).
Sussino, Francesco, Le vite de'pittorimessinesi,ed. V. Martinelli (Florence: Le
Monnier, 1960).
nelleredazioni
Vasari,Giorgio, Le vite de'piu eccellenti
pittoriscultorie architettori
del 1550 e 1568, ed. Paola Barocchi and Rosanna Bettarini, 6 vols. (Florence: SPES, 1966-84).
Notes
This article was first given as a lecture at the College Art Association Conference, New York, 2000, in a session organized by PerryChapman and Mariet
Westermann titled "Biographyas Art Criticism."I am grateful to them for
their helpful suggestions and for the use of "Biographyas Art Criticism"as a
title for the first section of this article. I am especially endebted to Richard
464
ART BULLETIN
SEPTEMBER
2002
VOLUME
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NUMBER
3
11 Portrait of Caravaggio, from Bellori,
Le vite, Rome: Mascardi, 1728,
woodcut (photo: Getty Research
Institute)
Spear, David Stone, and MarcGotlieb for their careful, critical reading of the
text. Charles Dempsey, Catherine Puglisi, Kathleen Weil-GarrisBrandt, MartenJan Bok, WendyWalgate,and my son Matthewalso contributed important
material and observations.
1. Derek Jarman, DerekJarman'sCaravaggio:The CompleteFilm Scriptand
Commentaries
byDerekJarman(London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), 7.
2. Enzo Siciliano, "Morte di Caravaggio,"in Cuoree fantasmi (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1990), 165-74. I am endebted to Matthew Sohm for
finding this story.
3. Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Die Legendevom Kfunstler:
Ein geschichtlicher
Versuch(Vienna: Krystall, 1934); and with emendations by Kurz and an
introduction by E. H. Gombrich, translatedas Legend,Myth,and Magicin the
Imageof theArtist:A HistoricalExperiment(New Haven: Yale UniversityPress,
1979). For a discussion of this seminal work, see Catherine Soussloff, The
AbsoluteArtist: The Historiography
of a Concept(Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), 94-111.
4. Paul Barolsky,WhyMonaLisa Smilesand OtherTalesby Vasari(University
Park, Pa.: Penn State UniversityPress, 1991), 4; see also idem, Michelangelo's
Nose:A Mythand Its Maker(UniversityPark, Pa.: Penn State UniversityPress,
1990).
5. Kris and Kurz, 1979 (as in n. 3), 119, note that biographers sometimes
"attemptto drawconclusions about the circumstancesof the artist'slife from
his works,"but they set this hypothesis aside as "exceeding the scope of our
investigation."After I completed this article, David Stone shared with me a
fascinatingstudy that tries, successfully,to bridge the gap between the artist's
real life and biographical fictions by suggesting that Caravaggiowas the
inventor of his own myth;Stone, "InFiguraDiaboli:Self and Mythin Caravagin FromRometoEternity:Catholicism
and theArtsin Italy,
gio's Davidand Goliath,"
ca. 1550-1650, ed. P. M. Jones and T. Worcester (Leiden: Brill, 2002). The
reader should turn to this excellent work for a review of the scholarly
literature on Caravaggio'scharacter and its relation to seicento biographies.
6. Hayden White, "Narrativein ContemporaryHistorical Theory," in The
Contentof Form:NarrativeDiscourseand HistoricalRepresentation
(Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1987), 45. White's earlier work in Metahistory:
TheHistoricalImaginationin 19th CenturyEurope(Baltimore:Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1973) and Tropicsof Discourse:Essaysin CulturalCriticism
(Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978) have proven influential
with relativelyfew art historians,as Michael Ann Holly noted in PastLooking:
HistoricalImaginationand the Rhetoricof theImage(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UniversityPress, 1996), 65-67.
7. The primarywork on this question for seicento artists is an article by
IrvingLavin,who has shown that "Bernini'sdeath was in more than the usual
sense like his life; it was a kind of artwork,diligently prepared and carefully
executed to achieve the desired effect";Lavin, "Bernini'sDeath,"ArtBulletin
54 (1972): 159. This, however, is an exceptional case, since artisticintentionality rarely plays into death stories. Bernini not only hoped to project a
flattering artisticand spiritualpersona to those present, but also, it might be
added, he attempted a posthumous autobiographyby providing biographers
with a tidy conclusion and summation of his art. Anton Raphael Mengs
modeled his death on Raphael's just as he did his art: [Gian Lodovico
Bianconi], Elogiostoricodel cavaliereAntonRaffaeleMengscon un catalogodelle
opereda essofatte (Milan: Nell'imperial monistero di S. Ambrogio, 1780),
74-78.
8. Vasari,vol. 2, 287.
9. Vasari,vol. 5, 333.
10. Lucretius,De rerumnatura3.58.
11. Denis Mahon, "Caravaggio'sDeath: A New Document,"BurlingtonMagazine93 (1951): 202-4; MaurizioCalvesi,"Nascitae morte del Caravaggio,"in
L'ultimoCaravaggioe la culturaartisticaa Napoliin Siciliae a Malta (Siracusa:
Ediprint,1987); idem, Lerealtadi Caravaggio(Turin:Einaudi, 1990);Vincenzo
Pacelli, "Lamorte di Caravaggioe alcuni suoi dipinti da documenti inediti,"
Studi di Storia dell'Arte2 (1991): 167-88; idem, L'ultimoCaravaggio:Dalla
CARAVAGGIO'S
DEATHS
465
Maddalenaa mezzafiguraai dueSan Giovanni,1606-1610 (Todi: Ediart, 1994);
and idem, "Una nuova ipotesi sulla morte di Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio," in MichelangeloMerisi da Caravaggio:La vita e le opereattraversoi
di studi,ed. StefaniaMacioce (Rome:
Atti delconvegnointernazionale
documenti;
Logart, [1996]), 184-94; and for Calvesi's response to Pacelli's new-found
documents, see his "Michelangeloda Caravaggio:Il suo rapporto con i Mattei
e con altri collezionisti a Roma," in Caravaggioe la collezioneMattei (Milan:
Electa, 1995), 17-28.
12. G. B. Marino, Galeria(Milan:Gio. BattistaBidelli, 1620), 28, quoted in
Bellori, 229: "Fecercrudel congiura/Michele, a danni tuoi Morte, e Natura./
Questa restar temea/de la tua mano in ogni immagin vinta,/ch'era da te
creata, e non dipinta./Quelle di sdegno ardea,/perche con larga usura/
quante la falce sua genti struggea/tante il pennello tuo ne rifacea." In
contrast,the epitaph for RaffaelleMotta (1551-1578) claims that his art could
not vanquishnature and so he succumbed to death: "Raphaelalter cras:cum,
ne succumberetArti/Natura, immitis MorsJuvenem rapuit";quoted in Carlo
Valli, Brevetrattatodellavita di RaffaeleMotareggianopittorefamosissimo
(Reggio
Emilia, 1657); reprint, ed. G. Adorni (Parma, 1850), 28. Both refer back to
Pietro Bembo's epitaph for Raphael:"Ille hic est Raphael timuit quo sospite
vinci/rerum magna parens et moriente mori." Falcone, 89, might have had
Marino's epitaph in mind when he listed Caravaggioamong artistskilled by
nature because of their proclivity:"Forsel'uccise morte adirata,perche eglino
co'l pennello rifacevan tant'uomini, quant'ella colla falce ne distruggeva?"
For Marino on Caravaggio,see Elizabeth Cropper, "The PetrifyingArt:MariMuseumJournal26 (1991): 193-212.
no's Poetry and Caravaggio,"Metropolitan
For a summaryof seicento sources that discuss Caravaggio'snaturalism,see
Ferdinando Bologna, L'incredulitadel Caravaggioe l'esperienzadelle "cosenaturali"(Turin: Einaudi, 1992), esp. 144-54.
13. For Milesi's epitaph, see Giorgio Fulco, "'Ammiratel'altissimo pittore':
Caravaggionelle rime inedite di Marzio Milesi,"Ricerchedi Storiadell'Arte10
(1980): 65-89.
14. Roger de Piles, Abregedela vie despeintres(Paris:Charlesde Sercy, 1699),
341-42.
15. F. Pyat, "La mort de Michel-Ange de Caravage,"L'Artiste4 (1832):
111-14. I am grateful to Marc Gotlieb for calling this story to my attention.
16. Baglione, 138-39 (translations of Baglione and Bellori are based on
those in Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio[New York: Harper and Row, 1983],
app. 2): "Arrivatoch'egli fu nella spiaggia,fu in cambio fatto prigione, e posto
dentro le carceri, ove per due giorni Leone a veder, se poteva in mare
rawisare il ritenuto, e poi rilassato,piu la felluca non ritrovavasi, che postosi
in furia, come disperato andava per quella spiaggia sotto la sferza del Sol
vascello, che le sue robe portava. Ultimamente arrivato in un luogo della
spiaggia misesi in letto con febre maligna; e senza aiuto humano tra pochi
giorni mori malamente, come appunto male havea vivuto."
17. The first rumor actuallypredates his death by almost a year: an avviso
sent on October 24, 1609, from Rome to the duke of Urbino announces
Caravaggio'smurder. The documentation concerning Caravaggio'sjourney
from Naples to Rome and his death in Port'Ercole is too extensive to detail
here. For the dominant theories, see the work by Mahon, Calvesi,and Pacelli
cited in n. 11 above. For recent summaries,see Macioce (as in n. 11); Helen
Langdon, Caravaggio(London: Chatto and Windus, 1998); and Catherine
Puglisi, Caravaggio(London: Phaidon, 1998). For subsequent additions to the
literature, see Michele Maccherini, "Caravaggionel carteggio familiare di
Giulio Mancini," Prospettiva86 (Apr. 1997): 71-92; and Stefania Macioce,
"Precisazionisulla biografiadel Caravaggioa Malta,"in Sulleormedi Caravaggio
traRomae Sicilia,ed. Vincenzo Abbate et al. (Venice: Marsilio,2001), 25-37.
18. Calvesi,1987 (as in n. 11), 27: "E'morto Michiel Angelo da Caravaggio
pittore cellebre a Port'Hercole mentre da Napoli veniva a Roma p(er) la
gratia da S(ua) S(anti)ta fattali del bando capitale che haveva."
19. Pacelli, 1994 (as in n. 11), letter ofJuly 29, 1610; and idem, 1996 (as in
n. 11), 184-85: "Caravaggionon e morto in Procida, ma a port'hercole,
perche esendo capitato con la felluca, in q(u)ale andava:a palo, ivi da quel
Capitanofu carcerato,e la felluca in q(u)el romore tiratasiin alto mare se ne
ritorno a Napoli, il Caravaggiorestato in pregione, si liber6 con un'sborso
grosso di denari, e per la terrae forse a piedi si ridusse sino a porthercole, ove
ammalatosi ha lasciato la vita."
20. Baglione, 27. The "Sol Leone" does not refer to the zodiac Leo (July
23-August 22), since Motta died in May and Caravaggioon July 18.
21. For Leoni's portraitsas Vasarianheaders to Gigli's planned biographies
of artistswho were overlooked or underrated by Vasari,see the introduction
by BarbaraAgosti and SilviaGinzburgto their criticaledition of Giulio Cesare
Gigli, La pittura trionfante(Porretta Terme: I Quaderni del Battello Ebbro,
1996), 7. Gigli's Pitturawas originally published in Venice, 1615. For further
discussion of Gigli, see M. Spagnolo, "Appuntiper Giulio Gigli:Pittori e poeti
nel primo seicento," Ricerchedi Storiadell'Arte59 (1996): 56-74; and Philip
Sohm, "Lacritica d'arte del seicento: Carlo Ridolfi e Marco Boschini,"in La
pitturanel Veneto:II Seicento,vol. 2, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan: Electa, 2001),
"The Earliest Account of Caravaggio in Rome," BurlingtonMagazine138
(1998): 25-28.
23. Gigli (as in n. 21), 53.
24. Bellori, 232: "Tali modi del Caravaggioacconsentivano alla sua fisonomia ed aspetto: era egli di color fosco, ed aveva foschi gli occhi, nere le
ciglia ed i capelli; e tale riusci ancora naturalmente nel suo dipingere. La
prima maniera dolce e pura di colorire fu la megliore, essendosi avanzatoin
essa al supremo merito e mostratosi con gran lode ottimo coloritore lombardo. Ma egli trascorse poi nell'altra oscura, tiratovi dal proprio temperamento, come ne' costumi ancora era torbido e contenzioso; gli convenne
per6 lasciar prima Milano e la patria; dopo fu costretto fuggir di Roma e di
Malta, ascondersi per la Sicilia, pericolare in Napoli, e morire disgraziatamente in una spiaggia."
25. Giovanni Ingegneri, Fisionomianaturale (Milan: Girolamo Bordoni e
PietromartireLocarni, 1607), 350; and Cornelio Ghirardelli,introduction to
(Bologna:EvangelistaDossi, 1630). Ghirardelli'streatiseis
Cefalogiafisonomica
particularly interesting for art historians because he includes nearly one
hundred engravings of heads, each illustrating a different physiognomic
aspect discussed in the text.
26. Ingegneri (as in n. 25), 350.
27. Camillo Baldi, Trattatocomeda una letteramissivasi conoscanola naturae
qualitadelloscrivere(Milan:Gio. Batt. Bidelli, 1625). For a discussion of Baldi,
see the preface by Armando Petrucci to his edition of Baldi's Lettera(Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1992); and for a discussion of Baldi in relation to Giulio
Mancini, see Philip Sohm, Pittoresco:MarcoBoschini,His Criticsand Their
and Eighteenth-Century
in SeventeenthItaly(CamCritiquesof PainterlyBrushwork
bridge: CambridgeUniversityPress, 1991), 76-77.
28. Baldi, 1625 (as in n. 27), chap. xii, 44-46.
29. Ingegneri (as in n. 25), 14; and Ghirardelli (as in n. 25), 27, 29, 149.
30. Baglione (147) gives this information in a comic version of imitation
where Caravaggio'sfollower Carlo Saraceni mimics him in life.
31. Gigli (as in n. 21), 53: ".. . di fantistico umor, certo bizzarro,/pallido in
viso, e di capillatura/assaigrande, arricciato,/gli occhi vivaci, si, ma incaverniti,/ch'un aureo baston portava in mano/per allentar, per stringer, per
condurre,/come piaceva a lui, dietro alla Donna l'onorata gente."
32.Julia Lupton, "TypologicalDesigns: Creation, Iconoclasm, and Nature
in Vasari'sLives of the Saints,"in Afterlivesof theSaints:Hagiography,Typology,
and RenaissanceLiterature(Stanford:Stanford UniversityPress, 1996).
33. Giovanna Perini, "I1Poussin di Bellori," in Poussin et Rome:Actesdu
deFrancea Rome,ed. Olivier Bonfait et al. (Paris:Reunion
colloquea 1'Academie
des Musees Nationaux, 1996), 294.
34. Although Bellori admits the beneficial effects of poison, especiallyat the
turn of the centurywhen painting needed a bit of poisoning, he concentrates
on its undesirable effects (Le vite de'pittori,scultorie architettimoderni[Rome:
Per il succeso al Mascardi,1672], 231): "Sicome dunque alcune erbe producono medicamenti salutiferi e veleni perniciosissimi, cosi il Caravaggio,se
bene giov6 in parte, fu nondimeno molto dannoso e mise sottosopra ogni
ornamento e buon costume della pittura."
35. Mia Cinotti, "Appendice,"in Gian Alberto Dell'Acqua,II Caravaggioe le
suegrandiopereda San LuigideiFrancesi(Milan:Rizzoli, 1971), 151 (F 31 [Nov.
19, 1600]).
36. Andre Felibien, Entretienssur les vies et sur les ouvragesdesplus excellents
5 vols. (Paris:Jean-BaptisteCoignard, 1679), vol. 3,
peintresancienset modernes,
203-5: "M. Poussin... ne pouvoit rien souffrir du Caravage,et disoit qu'il
estoit venu au monde pour destruire la Peinture."Baglione, 138: "Moreover,
some people thought that he had destroyed the art of painting [Anzipresso
alcuni si stima, haver'essorovinatala pittura]."Albani to Bononi, quoted in
Malvasia,vol. 2, 163: "Non pote mai tollerare, che si seguitasse il Caravaggio,
scorgendo essere quel modo il precipizio e la totale ruina della nobilissimae
compitissimavirtudella pittura .. ." For alternativeviews,see Louis Marin, To
DestroyPainting, trans. Mette Hjort (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995).
37. Federico Borromeo, Dellapitturasacra,ed. BarbaraAgosti (Pisa:Scuola
Normale Superiore di Pisa, 1994), 97 (Milan,BibliotecaAmbrosiana,ms F 31
inf., fol. 130v): "Narraa simile de Michel Angelo Caravagij:in illo apparebat
l'osteria, la crapula, nihil venusti: per lo contrario Rafaelo."
38. Vincenzo Carducho,Dialogosde lapintura (Madrid:Fr. Martinez,1633);
reprint, ed. F. Calvo Serraller (Madrid:Turner, 1977), 270.
39. Bellori, 214, 230. For Raphael's death, see Barolsky,1991 (as in n. 4),
38-39. The divine Raphael died, as he was born, on Good Friday,just like
Petrarch,and wasjust finishing Christ'sface in the Transfiguration
(Pinacoteca
Vaticana,Rome) when overtakenby death. GiampietroZanotti,Nuovofregiodi
gloria a Felsina semprepittricenella vita di LorenzoPasinelli, pittorebolognese
sulla pittura,ed. Adriana
(Bologna, 1703), 98. Giulio Mancini, Considerazioni
Marucchi (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1956), vol. 1, 225-26.
40. Vasari, vol. 3, 360 (with reference to Castagno's frescoes at S. Maria
Nuova, now lost): "Parimentevi ritrasseM. Bernardodi Domenico della Volta,
spedalingo di quel luogo, inginocchioni, che par vivo; et in un tondo nel
173-204. For further discussion of Leoni's portraits, not in the context of
Gigli's Gareggiopittorico, see H. W. Kruft, "Ein Album mit Portratzeichnungen
Ottavio Leonis," Storia dell'Arte4 (1969): 449-58; and Luigi Ficacci, ed., Claude
Mellan, gli anni romani: Un incisore tra Vouet e Bernini (Rome: Multigrafica,
1989), 144-53.
22. "Luca the barber," quoted in Sandro Corradini and Maurizio Marini,
principio dell'opere se stesso, con viso di Giuda Scarioto, come egl'era nella
presenza e ne' fatti."
41. Baldinucci's six-volume work was published in Florence by Santi Franchi in 1686, Piero Martini in 1688, Giuseppe Manni in 1702, and G. G. Tartini
in 1728. Baldinucci, 687.
42. Bellori, 228-29. Francois-Bernard Lepicie, Catalogue raisonne des tableaux
466
ART BULLETIN
SEPTEMBER
2002
VOLUME
LXXXIV
NUMBER
3
du roiavecun abregedela viedespeintres(Paris:L'ImprimerieRoyale, 1752), vol.
1, 93. A.J. Dezallier d'Argenville,Abregede la vie desplusfameuxpeintres(Paris:
De Bure, 1762), vol. 2, 286.
43. Bellori, 228-29: "Ond'egli,quanto prima gli fu possibile montato sopra
una feluca, pieno d'acerbissimo dolore s'invio a Roma, avendo gia con
l'intercessione del card. Gonzaga ottenuto dal papa la sua liberazione. Pervenuto alla spiaggia, la guardia spagnuola, che attendeva un altro cavaliere,
l'arrest6 in cambio e lo ritenne prigione. E se bene fu egli tosto rilasciatoin
liberta, non per6 rividde pii la sua feluca che con le robbe lo conduceva.
Onde agitato miseramenteda affanno e da cordoglio, scorrendo il lido al piu
caldo del sole estivo,giunto a Porto Ercole si abbandon6, e sorpresoda febbre
maligna mori in pochi giorni, circa gli anni quaranta di sua vita, nel 1609,
anno funesto per la pittura, avendoci tolto insieme Annibale Carracci e
Federico Zuccheri.Cosi il Caravaggiosi ridussea chiuder la vita e l'ossa in una
spiaggia deserta."
44. Dante, Inferno,canto 1, Purgatorio,lines 24-78. See also Petrarch, Canzoniere(3.1.part.l) and (7.4.part.1): "Consumandomi vo di piaggia in piaggia,/Il di pensoso, poi piango la notte." Leon BattistaAlberti, Intercoenales,
(Milan:Ricciardi,
quoted in Eugenio Garin,ed., Prosatorilatini delquattrocento
1952), 648, Alberticompared life to a flowing riverand death to the immobile
shores: "Isfluvius latine Vita aetasque mortalium dicitur;eius ripa Mors...."
Giacomo Zane, Rime(Venice: D. e G. B. Guerra, 1562), 151; and Annibale
Caro, Rime(Venice: BernardoGiunti, 1584), 68. Both used the poetic expression "mortalpiaggia"to signify earth as a place of transition, suffering, and
death. Gabriel Fiamma, Rime spirituali(Venice: Francesco de' Franceschi,
1570;reprint,Treviso, 1771), 103, sonnet 68; Fiammaused "fioritopiaggia"as
one of two paths in life, both leading ultimatelyto death: the "fioritopiaggia"
is "fullof flowersandjewels and gives pleasure to the senses [una pienadifiori,
e gioje, ed e quellade' piaceridel senso]";the second is rocky and hard and
demands "self-mortification[la mortificazione
di noi stessi]."
45. The convergence is based on a related observationby GiovanniBattista
Agucchi and was accepted by Bellori even though it contradicts the fact,
known to him, that Caravaggiodied in 1610. Luigi Spezzaferro,"ICarraccitra
naturalismoe classicismo,"in Le artia Bolognae in Emiliadal XVIal XVIIsecolo:
Atti delXXIVCongresso
CIHA(Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1982), 219-22, published
marginaliaby Agucchi on the coincident deaths. For a discussion of Bellori's
adaptation, and its moralizing conclusion, see Giovanna Perini, "Disegno
Romano dall'antico, amplificazionifiorentine e modello artisticobolognese,"
in Cassianodal Pozzo:Atti del SeminarioInternazionaledi Studi, ed. Francesco
Solinas (Rome: De Luca, 1989), 208 n. 38.
46. Baglione, 240.
47. Ibid., 159: "Ma egli mori in eta giovanile pieno di mal cattivo, che
infimo all'estremo della vita l'and6 consumando."
48. Ibid., 142 (in life of Orazio Borgianni, after narrating episodes of
aggression, such as attacking a doctor with a stick): ". . .e percio molti si
maravigliarono,ch'egli del tradimento non prendesse vendetta; ma natura
de' grandi awenimenti e, che subito atterrano, e l'animo infermo non pote
somministrarele forze al corpo, e come tocco dal fulmine perde la vita, prima
di sentirsi ferito."Ibid.
49. Bellori, 214: "Datosiperci6 egli a colorire secondo il suo proprio genio,
non riguardando punto, anzi spregiando gli eccellentissimi marmi de gli
antichi e le pitture tanto celebri di Rafaelle, si propose la sola natura per
oggetto del suo pennello. Laonde, essendogli mostratele statue pii famose di
Fidia e di Glicone, accioch6 vi accommodasse lo studio, non diede altra
risposta se non che distesse la mano verso una moltiudine di uomini, accennando che la natura l'aveva a sufficienza proveduto di maestri. E per dare
autoritaalle sue parole, chiam6 una zingana che passavaa caso per istrada,e
condottala all'albergola ritrassein atto di predire l'awenture, come sogliono
queste donne di razzaegizziana."
50. FranciscusJunius, ThePainting of the Ancients(London: R. Hodgkinssonne, 1638); ed. K. Aldrich, P. Fehl, and R. Fehl (Berkeley:Universityof
California Press, 1991), vol. 1, 94 (bk. 2, chap. iii). Junius is paraphrasing
Pliny, NaturalHistory34.19.61.
51. Bellori, 229-30: "Professavasiegli inoltre tanto ubbidiente al modello
che non si facevapropria n6 meno una pennellata, la quale diceva non essere
sua, ma della natura.... [C]ontuttoci6 molte e le megliori parti [of painting]
mancavano,perche non erano in lui ne invenzione ne decoro n6 disegno n6
scienza alcuna della pitturamentre tolto da gli occhi suoi il modello restavano
vacui la mano e l'ingegno." Felibien (as in n. 36), vol. 4, 11-13, 340. In
addition to the texts cited below, see also Franciscus Pacheco, Arte de la
pintura,su antiguedady grandezas(Seville:S. Faxardo,1649), 302, 340-41; and
Francesco Scannelli, II microcosmo
della pittura (Cesena: Neri, 1656), 197:
"professavasiegli inoltre tanto ubbidiente al modello che non si faceva
propria ne meno una pennellata, la quale diceva non essere sua ma della
natura."Luigi Scaramuccia,Lefinezzede'pennelliitaliani (Pavia:Magri, 1694),
75-76. Malvasia,vol. 2, 75-76.
52. Vasari,vol. 3, 575-76. Suetonius, TheLivesof IllustriousMen,trans.J. C.
Rolfe (London: Heinemann, 1930), vol. 2, 461.
53. Baldinucci, vol. 3, 686: "E tant'altre, e belle cose fece in quella citta
[Valletta], che gli venne fatto il conseguir suo intento nell'acquisto non pure
di quella croce [of Malta], ma eziandio d'una ricca collana d'oro, un regalo
di due schiavi, con altri doni; anzi di tanto grido fecesi appresso a tutti que'
cittadini, che poteva per certo affermare d'esser giunto al colmo d'ogni sua
piu desiderabile felicita: ma in fine esser non pu6, che col ragliare non
facciasi il giumento ben conscere per quel che gli &, tutto che ben sellato e
bardato, e con freno d'oro abbellito sia."
54. Ibid., 690: "Perdonisi al Caravaggio questo suo modo d'usare il pennello; mentre egli volle awerare in se medesimo quel proverbio che dice, che
ogni pittore dipigne se stesso, merc& che se s'osserva il modo, che egli uso nel
conversare, si trova tale, quale sopra accennammo; se ci voltiamo al portamento di sua persona lo veggiamo stravagante quanto altro mai, e poco e il
dire, che egli volendo pascere sua burbanza, particolarmente dopo la conseguita dignita di cavaliere, vestivasi di nobile drapperia, n& mutavasela mai, sin
tanto non se la vedeva cascare in terra a brano a brano...." Sussino, 109:
"Tutto che si vedesse Michelagnolo colla croce in petto, non solo non Pasci6
la torbidezza del suo naturale, anzi vie piu lascio acciecarsi dalla pazzia di
stimarsi cavaliere nato."
55. G. B. Agucchi, Trattato, ca. 1606-10, in Denis Mahon, Studies in Seicento
Art and Theory (London: Warburg Institute, 1947), 256-57: "E fra questi il
Caravaggio eccellentissimo nel colorire si dee comparare a Demetrio, perche
ha lasciato indietro l'Idea della bellezza, disposto di seguire del tutto la
similitudine."
56.. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Teaching and Sayings of Famous Philosophers,ed.
and trans. R. D. Hicks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925),
8.33-39. Heraclitus's belief in the humors led him to treat his dropsy by
burying himself in cow dung and baking in the sun, with fatal results (9.4).
57. Piero Valeriano, De litteratorum infelicitate (Venice: Iacobum Sarzinam,
1620), vol. 1, 36, quoted in Julia Haig Gaisser, Piero Valeriano on the Ill Fortune
of Learned Men: A Renaissance Humanist and His World (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1999), 123.
58. Paolo Giovio, Gli elogia della uomini illustri ..., in Opere, ed. Renzo
Meregazzi (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1972),
vol. 8, 86. The student quoted by Giovio is Marcantonio dalla Torre.
59. Giovanni Francesco Loredano and Pietro Michieli, I Cimiterio:Epitafi
giocosi (Venice: Guerigli, 1674). In addition to the famous (Pliny, 34, Seneca,
59), they include character types: "D'un Avaro. Epitafo I. S'en giace qui tra
questi marmi unita/D'un Avaro crudel l'alma meschina/Che pianse quando
Morte hebbe vicina/La spesa del Sepolcro, e non la vita."
60. Vasari, vol. 4, 54. Girolamo Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modeneseo notizie della
vita e delle operedegli scritori natii degli stati del serenissimosignoreDuca di Modena
(Modena: Societa Tipografica, 1786), vol. 6, pt. 2, 297, cites Vasari's story of
Correggio's death as an example of the error-ridden Vite:How, he asks, could
Correggio die from heatstroke if his journey occurred in February, a few
weeks before his death on March 5?
61. Baglione, 27 (quoted in n. 20 above).
62. Baldinucci, 681, describes Caravaggio's cellar light as "a light that
entered from a ground-level window into a cellar": "Onde gran fatto non fu,
che il Caravaggio in quel tempo alcune sue opere desse fuori assai lontane da
quel modo, che e' tenne poi, tanto cariche di scuri, che coloro, che vollero
maliziosamente awilire il suo pennello, usarono di dire, ch'egli era solito
imitare i suoi naturali a quel lume, che porgon le finestre dal pian di terra alle
cantine." For Baldinucci's conclusion that "it seems fitting that Caravaggio
died in a public place, alone and friendless in the open air," see 688-89.
63. Bellori, 218: "N6 cessavano [the older painters] di sgridare il Caravaggio
e la sua maniera, divolgando ch'egli non sapeva uscir fuori dalle cantine...."
And on 217: "E s'inoltro egli tanto in questo suo modo di operare, che non
faceva mai uscire all'aperto del sole alcuna delle sue figure, ma trovo una
maniera di campirle entro l'aria bruna d'una camera rinchiusa, pigliando un
lume alto che scendeva a piombo sopra la parte principale del corpo, e
lasciando il rimanente in ombra a fine di recar forza con veemenza di chiaro
e di scuro."
64. Bellori, 229: "Non si trova per6 che egli usasse cinabri ne azzurri nelle
sue figure; e se pure tal volta li avesse adoperati, li ammorzava, dicendo
ch'erano il veleno delle tinte; non diro dell'aria turchina e chiara, che egli
non colori mai nell'istorie, anzi uso sempre il campo e '1 fondo nero."
65. Lione Pascoli, Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti moderni, 2 vols. (Rome,
1730-36); reprint, ed. Valentino Martinelli (Perugia: Electa Editori Umbri,
1992), 401: "Torceva in mille orride guise la bocca, stralunava di quando in
quando spaventevolmente gli occhi ..."
66. Tacitus, Dialogus 34-35. For the contrast of open public orations given
in sunlight and closed private orations given in academia's shadows, see
Wesley Trimpi, "The Meaning of Horace's Ut Pictura Poesis," Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973): 1-31; and idem, "Horace's Ut
Pictura Poesis:The Argument for Stylistic Decorum," Traditio 34 (1978): 29 -72.
67. Malvasia, vol. 2, 9: "Che tante maraviglie, disse Annibale ivi presente?
Parvi egli questo un nuovo effetto della novita? Io vi dico, che tutti quei che
con non piu veduta, e da essi loro inventata maniera usciran fuore, incontreranno sempre la stessa sorte, e non minore la loda. Saprei ben io,
soggiuns'egli, un altro modo per far gran colpo, anzi da vincere e mortificare
costui: a quel colorito fiero vorrei contrapporne uno affatto tenero: prende
egli un lume serrato e cadente? E io lo vorrei aperto, e in faccia: cuopre quegli
le difficolta dell'arte fra l'ombre della notte? Ed io a un chiaro lume di mezzo
giorno vorrei scoprire i piu dotti ed eruditi ricerchi." This passage had an
afterlife with Guido Reni's paintings substituted for Annibale's challenge,
notably, in writings by Anton Francesco Ghiselli, Anton Maria Salvini, Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi, and Francesco Algarotti. Ghiselli (1685-1724) seems
to be the originator; see Giovanna Perini, "Biographical Anecdotes and
Historical Truth: An Example from Malvasia's 'Life of Guido Reni,"' Studi
CARAVAGGIO'S
DEATHS
467
Secenteschi
31 (1990): 150. For Algarotti, see n. 73 below. Two further adaptations not noted by Perini can be added here. Antoine Coypel paraphrased
the quote in his series of lectures "Sur l'esthetique du peintre" for the
de l'Academie
Acad6mie Royale (1712-19); see A. Merot, ed., Les conferences
Royalede Peintureet de Sculptureau XVIIesiecle (Paris: Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, 1996), 412. And Salvini, Prosetoscanerecitatedal
della Crusca:Parte seconda(Florence: Stamperia di
medesimonell'Accademia
S.A.R.per i Guiducci, 1735), 152-53, adapts it thus: "Sonoci piuimaniere, e
tutte, benche diversissimetra loro, pure posseggono le loro bellezze particolari. Dopo tanti, e tanti Pittori famosissimi si trovo un Guido, che abbandonando la maniera del suo Maestro, si diede di fare le sue pitture come a
sfolgorante lume di piazza. Altri, come un Caravaggio,mostr6 maniera di
forza."
68. For Algarottion Caravaggioand his use of Cicero, see nn. 71, 73 below.
For Zuccaro on Caravaggio,see Baglione, 137.
69. Scaramuccia(as in n. 51), 77. Bellori, 231, might be his source: "... restando [i pittori] ne gli errori e nelle tenebre; finche Annibale Carraccivenne
ad illuminare le menti ed a restituire la bellezza all'imitazione."
70. For Annibale's letter to Lodovico (Apr. 28, 1580), see GiovannaPerini,
ed., Gli scrittideiCarracci(Bologna: Nuova Alfi, 1990), 152. For a discussion of
the variousversionsof Carraccias a faker, as told by Agucchi, MarcoBoschini,
and Malvasia,see Philip Sohm, Stylein theArt Theoryof EarlyModernItaly(New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 37-39. For Carracci'sclaim that
painters speak with their hands, see Agucchi, cited in Mahon (as in n. 55),
254; and CharlesDempsey, AnnibaleCarracciand theBeginningsof BaroqueStyle
(Gliickstadt:J. J. Augustin, 1977), 1-3.
71. Francesco Algarotti, Saggio sopral'Accademiadi Franciache e in Roma
(Livorno, 1763), cited in Saggi, ed. G. Da Pozzo (Bari: Laterza, 1961), 22,
observed that GiambattistaPiazzetta's "severe and harsh style [stile severoe
aspro]"followed Caravaggio,who sought to shutter the light [cercavadi serrare
il lume]."
72. Malvasia,vol. 2, 9, described Caravaggio'stenebrism as "violent and
impetuous,"creating "aclash"of chiaroscuro:"Tantoappunto seppe eseguire
in poco tempo l'ardito, che con quella stessa pazienza, con che prima se
passaggio a dipinger fiori, datosi a ritrar gli uomini ad un lume violento e
strabocchevole,il fracassodi questo gran chiaroscuro, e la facilita di un puro
naturale, confacevole ad ogni piu mediocre intendimento, fermo tutti sulle
prime." For Caravaggio's"dark and hunted style [quella manieracacciatae
scura],"see ibid., 13.
73. Francesco Algarotti, Trattatodellapittura (Venice, 1756; rev. ed. Bologna, 1762), cited in Da Pozzo (as in n. 72), 109: "GuidoReni, che men6 vita
lieta e splendida, diede alle sue opere gaita e vaghezza,parve innamorato del
lume aperto; e del lume serrato, in contrario, Michelangelo da Caravaggio,
burbero nelle maniere e selvatico."In a footnote to this observation,Algarotti
quoted Cicero (Orator9) as his source.
von GiovanniBattista
74. Giovanni Battista Passeri, Die Kuinstlerbiographien
Passeri,ed. J. Hess (Leipzig: H. Keller, 1934), 83. Passeri describes Caravaggio's response to the Manneristsas having "salliedforth"against them (giving
this a militaryspin with his choice of "uscitofuora")with vigor or vehemence
("empito"). Elsewhere (347) he describes Caravaggio'sstyle as "gagliardae
vigorosa."
75. Malvasia,vol. 2, 75.
76. Bellori, 205 ("he did not know how to leave the cellar [non sapevauscir
fuori dallecantine]");Baldinucci, 681.
svelataa' dilettanti,Bassano,
77. GiovanniBattistaVolpato, La veritapittoresca
Biblioteca Comunale ms 31 A 25, fols. 151, 204, 214-15, 257; and Elia
Bordignon Favero,GiovanniBattistaVolpatocriticoepittore(Treviso:De Longhi,
1994), 411, 414-15, 412, 420-21. For a discussion of the technique and optics
of the lumeserratoas applied to Bassano'spaintings, see Favero, 68-73.
78. Agucchi, cited in Mahon (as in n. 55), 257.
79. Antonio Pigafetta,Viaggioattornoal mondo,ed. MariarosaMasoero(Rovereto: Longo, 1987), 101 (writtenin the 1520s):"Loteneno in casa cinque o sei
giorni con queste cerimonie (credo sia onto de canfora); poi lo sepelisseno
con la medesima casa, serata con chiodi de legno, in uno legno coperto e
circundato de legni."PietroAretino, Levitedeisanti:SantaCaterinavergine;San
Tommasod'Aquino,ed. F. Santin (Rome: Bonacci, 1977), 114. Antonio Allegri,
Rimee prose(Venice, 1605; reprint, Amsterdam, 1754), 148.
80. Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi, Abecedario
pittorico(Bologna: Pisari, 1704),
"...'. introdusse a dipingere in pubblico con quel gran
286, s.v. "Caravaggio":
tingere di macchia, e furbesco, che non lasciava trovare conto del buon
contorno."See also Malvasia,vol. 2, 67-68. Orlandi, 203, adapted this passage
for his entry on Donducci.
81. Sussino, 113 (in reference to Caravaggio's "tingere di macchia,
furbesco").
toscanodell'artedeldisegno(Florence:Santi
82. Filippo Baldinucci, Vocabolario
fourth definition: "?[Emacchia significa
Franchi, 1681), 86, s.v. "macchia";
bosco folto & orrido, e tal'ora semplice siepe. Lat. Vepretum.
I E di qua, come
che in tali macchie si nascondano, e fiere e ladroni a fare furtivamenteloro
Sohm (as in n. 70), 146-53. For forests described as "so closed off that one
cannot pass, blocked by the many trees [tantoserratichenon vi si pubpassareper
l'impedimento
deglispessiarbori],"where the "shuttered"effect involves darkness, seclusion, and implied dangers, see Giovanni Battista Ramusio [Vespucci], Navigazionie viaggi,ed. MaricaMilanesi (Turin:Einaudi, 1978), vol. 1,
676.
83. Stone (as in n. 5).
84. Baldinucci, 690 (as quoted in n. 94); discussed by Stone (as in n. 5).
85. Federico Zuccaro, quoted in Baglione, 137: "Purvenendovi a vederla
Federico Zucchero, mentre io era presente, disse, Che rumore e questo? e
guardando il tutto diligentemente, soggiunse, Io non ci vedo altro, che il
pensiero di Giorgione...."
86. Sandro Benedetti, "Caravaggio's'Taking of Christ,' a Masterpiece Rediscovered,"BurlingtonMagazine135 (1993): 731-41.
87. Roberto Longhi, "Un originale del Caravaggioa Rouen e il problema
delle copie caravaggesche,"Paragone11 (Jan. 1960): 26-36.
88. For the proposal of the lantern carrieras a Diogenes figure, without the
argument introduced here, see MaurizioMarini,"Caravaggioe il naturalismo
ed.
internazionale,"in Storiadell'arteitaliana,parte2: Dal Medioevoal Novecento,
Federico Zeri (Turin: Einaudi, 1981), 368.
89. Bellori, 230: "il Caravaggionon apprezzavaaltri che se stesso, chiamandosi egli fido, unico imitatore della natura...."
90. Baglione, 138: "ed usciva tal'hora a dir male di tutti li pittori passati, e
presenti per insigni, che si fussero; poiche a lui parea d'haver solo con le sue
opere avanzatitutti gli altri della sua professione."
91. Tommaso Stigliani, Lettere(Rome: Manelfi, 1664), 132-33, letter to
Paolo Giordano Orsini, May 15, 1636; Baglione, 138.
92. For two alternativeinterpretationsto traditionaliconographies such as
that by KristinHermann Fiore, "I Bacchinomalatoautoritrattodel Caravaggio
ed altre figure bacchiche degli artisti,"Quademidi PalazzoVenezia6 (1989):
95-134; and Avigdor Poseq, "Caravaggio'sSelf-Portraitas the Beheaded Goliath," Konsthistorisk
Tidskrift59 (1990): 169-82 (with a summary of earlier
literature), see Michael Fried, "Thoughtson Caravaggio,"CriticalInquiry24
Secrets(Cam(1997): 13-56; and Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, Caravaggio's
bridge, Mass.:MIT Press, 1998).
93. Fried (as in n. 92).
94. Baldinucci, 690: "Perdonisial Caravaggioquesto suo modo d'usare il
pennello; mentre egli volle awerare in se medesimo quel proverbio che dice,
che ogni pittore dipigne se stesso, merce che se s'osservail modo, che egli us6
nel conversare, si trova tale, quale sopra accennammo; se ci voltiamo al
portamento di sua persona lo veggiamo stravagantequanto altro mai, e poco
e il dire, che egli volendo pascere sua burbanza, particolarmente dopo la
conseguita dignita di cavaliere,vestivasidi nobile drapperia, ne mutavasela
mai, sin tanto non se la vedeva cascare in terra a brano a brano, se
l'osserveremo in quello, in che fino gl'istessi bruti pare che premano
alquanto, che e il tener netto il proprio corpo, ed il nutrirsi, lo vedremo
difettoso, trovandosiche egli nel primo fu negligentissimo, e nel secondo non
meno."
95. Martin Kemp, "'Ogni Dipintore Dipinge Se': A Neoplatonic Echo in
Leonardo's Art Theory?"in CulturalAspectsof theItalianRenaissance:
Essaysin
Honour of Paul OskarKristelle;,ed. Cecil Clough (Manchester: Manchester
UniversityPress, 1976), 311-23; Frank Z6llner, "'Ogni Pittore Dipinge Se':
Leonardo da Vinci and Automimesis,"'in Kinstler ibersichin seinemWerk:
derBibliothek
Internationales
Hertziana,ed. MatthiasWinner (WeinSymposium
heim: VCH Acta Humaniora, 1992), 137-60; and for a discussion in relation
to Caravaggiobiographies, see Stone (as in n. 5).
96. Leonardo da Vinci, TreatiseonPainting,ed. Philip McMahon (Princeton:
Princeton UniversityPress, 1956), 86; and Kemp (as in n. 95). Savonarola
wrote that paintersalwayscapture their unique and stable concetto;
Savonarola,
PredichesopraEzechiele,ed. Roberto Ridolfi (Rome: Belardetti, 1955), vol. 1,
343, predica xxvi, quoted in Ronald Steinberg, Fra GirolamoSavonarola,FlorentineArt, and RenaissanceHistoriography
(Athens, Ohio: Universityof Ohio
Press, 1977), 48.
97. Because Kemp's and Z6llner's articles do not cover the 17th century, it
maybe useful to reviewsome of the sources.As a physician,Giulio Mancini (as
in n. 39), vol. 1, 107, introduced a new medical explanation, based on his
reading of Hippocrates, of why painters reproduce their corporeal features.
In a letter of January4, 1633, Claudio Achillini wrote to Giacomo Gaufrido
(with Guido Reni in mind) that "drawingand coloring figures by a natural
instinct, painters draw and color themselves, or at least figures that closely
resemble themselves, and do so without proper diligence or advice [i pittori,
figure, dissegnano,e coloriscono
per un'instintodi natura, dissegnando,e colorendo
senza propriaindustria,6 consiglio,se medesimi,6 almenofigure in gran parte
The letter is published in G. B. Manzini, ed., In
somigliantia se medesimi.]"
nate a gloriad'un rattod'Helena
trionfodelpennello:Raccoltad'alcunecompositioni
di Guido(Bologna:G. A. Magri,1633), 46. Malvasia,vol. 2, 136. "Becauseevery
painter portrayshimself, having a melancholic nature, he had a particular
talent for sad things;contraryto Correggiowhose figures are alwayslaughing,
malefizi, dicesi, fare che che sia alla macchia, per farlo nascosamente, furtivamente; cosi delli Stampatori, Monetieri, o Falsatori di monete, che senza
alcuna autorita del pubblico stampano o lavorano, dicesi stampare, o batter
monete alla macchia. Anche appresso i Pittori usasi questo termine ne' ritratti
ch'essi fanno, senza avere avanti l'oggetto, dicendo ritrarre alla macchia,
owero questo ritratto e fatto alla macchia." For a discussion of macchia, see
Tiarini's are crying and grieving .... [Perche ogni pittoreritrae se stesso, essendo egli
[Alessandro Tiarini] di natura malinconico, ebbeun genio particolare alle cose meste;
onde al contrario del Correggioche sempreridenti, piangenti e addolorateci se vederele
sue figure il Tiarini....]"
Salvator Rosa, Satire sulla pittura, lines 224-26,
utilized it satirically: "Other painters only study animals, and without looking
at themselves in the mirror, they portray them accurately and naturally [Altri
468
ART BULLETIN
SEPTEMBER
2002
VOLUME
LXXXIV
NUMBER
3
[pittori]studianoafar sol'Animali,/Esenzarimirarsientrod gli specchi,/Siritraggono
giusti, e naturali]";Rosa, Satire,ed. D. Romei (Milan: Mursia, 1995), 103.
Passeri (as in n. 74), 397, concluded that Rosa was "in love with himself
[inamoratodi se stesso.]"Rosa'sverse was probablyinspired by Michelangelo's
acerbic response to a painter who proudly showed him a picture of an ox:
"Everypainter portrays himself well [Ogni pittoreritraese medesimobene]";
Vasari,vol. 6, 118.
98. Mancini (as in n. 39), 234: "[N]on si maravigliavache dipingesse cosi
bene e si belle le cose di questo mondo, poiche dipinggeva se stessa essendo
lei bellissima .. ."This was possiblyinspired by OttavianoRabasco,La Pallade
ignuda:DellafamosapittriceLavinia Fontana;Canzonetta(Rome, 1605), n.p.:
"Mase i modi Celesti/Formar non osi d'immortal sembiante,/Ti, che dal
Ciel l'havesti,/Fingi le tue maniere e vaghe, e sante;/Ch'havrai Pallade
espressa,/Se delle tele fai specchio a te stessa."He then continues to describe
Fontana'sbeauty:"fiera,e ridente mira, e mille faci da begl'occhi spira...."
99. DavidStone (as in n. 5) and I arrivedat a similarreading of this passage
in Baldinucci. His article should be consulted for a more thorough examination of its implications.
100. Falcone, 3: "un vagheggiarsia fonte limpido e trasparente."
101. Ibid., 77-78.
102. Ibid., 88.
103. Ibid.: "... in un'istante si ritrasse, cosi al naturale, nel Fonte." Leon
BattistaAlberti, Operevolgari,ed. Cecil Grayson(Bari:Laterza,1973), vol. 3, 46
(bk. 3, cap. 26): "Chedirai tu essere dipignere altracosa che simile abracciare
con arte quella ivi superficie del fonte?"For two recent discussionsof Alberti's
origin story, see Paula Carabell, "Painting, Paradox, and the Dialectics of
Narcissism in Alberti's De picturaand in the Renaissance Theory of Art,"
Medievalia et Humanistica 25 (1998): 53-73; and Hubert Damisch,
"L'inventeurde la peinture,"Albertiniana4 (2001).
104. Falcone, 88: "RichiestoMichelangiolo da Caravaggio,che facesse un
gruppo d'Angioli nel largo campo, che resta in alto, in quel famoso quadro;
in cui si piangono, e s'ammirano i funerali di S. Lucia in Siracusa,egli non
volle dipingerli, dicendo: 'Non ha vendone mai veduti, non so ritrarli."'
105. Bellori, 229 (quoted in n. 64 above).
106. Falcone, 88: "Il Preterito fui un'Idea dell'instabilita del Presente. Il
Presente &un'esemplare della fugacita del Futuro. Il Futuro sara un ritratto
della vanita da Preterito, e del Presente.... Si che il tempo tutto altro non e,
che figura d'un momento fluido, ed ombra momentanea d'un fallace invisibile."
107. Stigliani (quoted and cited in n. 91).
108. Sussino, 114: "L'avervoluto altresi fuor della sua professione andar
questionando le cose della nostra sacrosantareligione, gli da taccia di miscredente, quando che gli stessi Gentili hanno mostratouna gran modestia ne'
misteri di essa ...." The passage on holy water immediately precedes this.
109. Mancini (as in n. 39), vol. 1, 225; Bellori, 224-25; and Baglione, 138:
"[U]ltimamente affrontatosi con Ranuccio Tomassoni giovane di molto
garbo, per certa differenza di gioco di palla a corda, sfidaronsi, e venuti
all'armi, caduto a terra Ranuccio, Michelagnolo gli tiro d'una punta, e nel
pesce della coscia feritolo il diede a morte. Fuggirono tutti da Roma, e
Michelagnolo andossene a Pellestrina,ove dipinse una s. MariaMaddalena."
110. For the David and Goliathas an act of contrition, see Calvesi, 1990 (as
in n. 11), 382-83; idem, 1995 (as in n. 11), 24; and Puglisi (as in n. 17),
359-65. Stone (as in n. 5), however,argues that this is a late Roman workand
hence cannot be considered to be "agloomy icon foretelling the artist'stragic
death."
This is an interesting article, it does not, as I had hoped, discuss the movie, but rather deals with the question of how an artist's
biography represents or relates to his (or her) artistic practice.
It will be useful in class to raise questions about how viewer's relate to works of art based on what they know or think about the person
who made it.
Also it is interesting to understand that in his day Caravaggio's naturalism was frowned upon because of its crudeness. this is
interestingly represented in the film although his crassness and mean-spiritedness seems overblown.

Caravaggio`s Deaths

Transcript

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